MLC Limited commits to BlueMountain Credit Alternatives
BlueMountain Capital Management, a private investment firm with more than $14.5 billion in assets under management, has won its first mandate in Australia.
MLC, one of the country’s leading asset and wealth management firms, will invest into its flagship vehicle, the BlueMountain Credit Alternatives (BMCA) Fund. This will be held within MLC’s Low Correlation Strategy, which has returned 10.9% since inception with a correlation of -0.1% to the MSCI AC World Index.
“BlueMountain has built an enviable record in achieving alpha in the credit markets over the past 10 years and we think they will provide a return profile that is attractive and complementary to our diversified portfolios,” said Gareth Abley, Head of Alternative Strategies at MLC.
“We have been speaking to the BlueMountain team for some time before reaching this decision. We have been impressed with their collaborative culture, intellectual rigour and their comprehensive, multi-strategy approach to credit investing,” Mr Abley added.
MLC is the wealth management division of National Australia Bank, and provides investment, superannuation, insurance and private wealth solutions to corporate and institutional customers. As of September 2012, MLC managed approximately $120.8 billion on behalf of individual investors and corporate customers in Australia.
“Australia is one of the most important markets in the world with a retirement savings pool of $1.4 trillion and we have invested a lot of time and effort to build relationships there,” said BlueMountain President and Co-Founder Stephen Siderow.
“We believe MLC was attracted to our distinctive relative value investment approach that combines three core areas of expertise: fundamental research on companies, quantitative analysis of market relationships, and technical understanding of market dynamics and instruments/structures. They are a sophisticated client and we are delighted to have them on board.”
BlueMountain’s flagship BMCA fund is a relative value, multi-strategy credit fund, which allocates capital across three broad portfolio strategies: fundamental, structured credit, arbitrage and technical. The firm has successfully pursued these strategies since the fund’s inception in 2003.
BlueMountain is an Affiliate of the US-based Affiliated Managers Group, Inc (AMG), a global asset management company with equity investments in leading investment managers. AMG has opened a number of offices around the world in the past six years, including in Sydney, to help its Affiliates seamlessly do business outside their home bases.
