Ty Archibald

When you hear the term “The Big Three” you might instantly think of legendary Tennis players Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. Or if you’re into music, perhaps Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, and Drake come to mind. Investing now has its own version of The Big Three, which consists of Amazon, Costco, and Walmart. These three ‘retail superpowers’ have experienced sustained growth and are increasingly dominating the U.S. retail landscape.

Collectively, in the second quarter 2025, the trio accounted for an estimated 45% of incremental retail sales (Amazon 24%, Costco 11%, and Walmart 10%). Said another way, 45 cents of every incremental dollar of U.S. retail sales is spent with one of these three companies, against an estimated 3 million U.S. retail businesses.

Not only are they growing at the fastest rates in the industry, but they are doing so off a much larger revenue base. For example, Walmart has continued to grow in the 5-6% range despite more than $700bn of annual revenues. Scale is an increasingly important competitive advantage, allowing the big to keep getting bigger.

The sheer size of these business drives bargaining power with suppliers and the ability to absorb any incremental cost pressures across a larger base, limiting impact to profits. Keeping prices below peers, and even expanding the value gap, creates a flywheel of higher growth and profitability which can continuously be reinvested into lower prices and product assortment. From a customer perspective, that means lower prices, higher quality products, and more convenience.

Scale advantages are more pronounced in e-commerce, with the added benefit of accessibility and delivery squeezing out traditional bricks and mortar peers and smaller players who lack the financial and logistical capabilities to compete. E-commerce is the fastest growing retail channel, and within that, the share gains are even larger – Walmart grew 26% in the most recent quarter and Amazon 12%. Combined, they accounted for a staggering 85% of incremental e-commerce sales.

If they are winning, who is losing?

Smaller retailers generally are in a tough spot. However, simply being big isn’t enough to guarantee success. Other well-known stores, such as Target, are also suffering. Once labelled ‘Targét’ due to its slightly upmarket general merchandise and home goods offerings, the company has lost its way. Although much of Target’s pain is self-inflicted, The Big Three’s ability to provide an increasingly better quality of product for a lower price has led to market share losses for Target, with growth turning negative while The Big Three continue delivering solid revenue growth rates.

Traditional pharmacies are also challenged as Costco and Walmart expand their competing offerings, allowing trip consolidation for customers as they no longer need to make an extra stop at the pharmacy for basic products. The outcome is CVS closing stores and adjusting pricing models. Walgreens previously announced it would close 1200 stores and that 1 in 4 were no longer profitable. It was recently acquired by a private equity firm with the goal of implementing a turnaround. While Costco and Walmart have grown net income at attractive rates post-Covid, the large pharmacy chains are less profitable today than they were five years ago, with Walgreens now loss making.

Stock selection within The Big Three

It’s no surprise all three have strong earnings momentum, and as such, Alphinity’s Portfolios have significant exposure (to varying degrees) to these winning stocks. However, there are notable differences in the strategies these businesses deploy.

Amazon is the undisputed leader in e-commerce, with an estimated 80% of U.S. online shoppers having purchased from the website in the past year. Costco sits at the other end of the spectrum, with e-commerce accounting for only 7% of total sales. Instead, it sells a limited amount of high-quality goods, usually in bulk quantities, at industry-leading prices. The assortment is different to other retailers and various items on the shelves regularly change, providing a treasure hunt experience which lends itself to shopping in person and has been hugely successful.

Walmart is a blend of Amazon and Costco. With a heritage in groceries and the need to keep produce fresh, Walmart historically lent on in-person shopping. More recently the company has leveraged the >4,500 store footprint to double as distribution centres for online ordering and delivery, with the ability to reach 93% of U.S. households in under three hours, creating a promising growth avenue.

Although the approaches may differ, the common characteristics they share are scale and strong execution against their preferred strategies. We see a continuation of these recent trends and believe The Big Three will continue to dominant U.S. retail for the foreseeable future.

Retail opportunities outside The Big Three

That doesn’t mean all retail is out of bounds and will be consumed by the The Big Three. Opportunities remain in a select number of high-quality specialty retailers that are thriving despite the success of Amazon, Costco, and Walmart.

One of these is O’Reilly Automotive, a recent addition to the Portfolio. O’Reilly is the second largest auto parts retailer in the U.S. and the largest supplier to the professional market. O’Reilly benefits from a dense hub-and-spoke distribution network, providing the best reliability and delivery times, which has driven customer loyalty and market share gains over decades, leading to consistent EPS growth.

Auto parts is a knowledge-based industry that is difficult to replicate by mass market retail, with customers going into the stores seeking advice and wanting to talk to an expert. The specialist sales process is especially important on the professional side where O’Reilly thrives, shielding it from competitive threats by large broadline retailers.

O’Reilly is also one of only a few companies that can benefit from tariffs. The industry has lacked price inflation over the past year, and with that coming back into the growth algorithm, combined with the needs-based sale (if your car is broken you need to fix it), revenue and earnings growth should accelerate. With tariffs potentially driving up the cost of new cars, consumers are more likely to hold onto existing vehicles for longer and forgo upgrading, leading to greater demand for repair work.

While The Big Three retail superpowers dominate, attractive opportunities remain amidst the smaller players, especially in specialist retail. The key is identifying quality businesses with strong momentum and expanding competitive advantages, where the risk of disappointment is low. For investors, it’s time to position capital behind structural winners, such as The Big Three, while also remaining perceptive to unique retail businesses that can continue to thrive in a dynamic macro environment.

By Ty Archibald, Global Research Analyst

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Jonas Palmqvist

Expanding its global reach, Alphinity Investment Management, a leading Australian-based equity boutique, is launching a UCITS version of its flagship Global Equity Fund.

The Alphinity Global Equity Fund offers investors exposure to a high conviction portfolio, targeting 25-30 stocks, diversified across sectors and regions. The Fund aims to deliver consistent strong risk-adjusted returns across market cycles.

The Australian-based team has been running the global equity strategy since 2015. Since inception to the end of August 2025, the strategy has outperformed the MSCI World Net benchmark.

Alphinity Portfolio Manager and Global Equity Co-Founder, Jonas Palmqvist, said the launch of the UCITS version of the Fund comes in response to continued demand from investors across the region for high-quality, active global equity strategies.

“We aim to invest in high-quality companies, trading at reasonable valuations at the right point in their earnings cycle, targeting earnings surprises rather than just growth. This enables us to tap into distinct and differentiated return drivers.” Mr Palmqvist said.

The strategy is style-agnostic, grounded in a transparent and repeatable process that follows established earnings leadership across diverse sectors and geographies. This core approach serves as a complement to traditional style-specific strategies.

The Fund will be classified as an Article 8 Fund, given the deep consideration of ESG as part of the investment approach. The Fund promotes environmental and social characteristics and limits its investments to only companies that follow good governance practices.

The Fund launch comes as Alphinity marks its 15-year track record in Australian equities alongside 10 years of successfully managing global equities. Alphinity has a singular investment philosophy and process which is implemented across the firm.

Alphinity’s global distribution partner, Fidante, part of the ASX-listed Challenger Group, will be responsible for distributing the Fund across the UK and Europe.

“As a partner with Alphinity we are excited to bring their highly regarded Global Equity product to the market and support their diversification and growth globally,” Evan Reedman, General Manager of Fidante Affiliates, said.

“Stock selection is becoming even more important as uncertainty grows around how long markets can continue to climb higher. Investors are actively looking to develop portfolios that are robust and resilient regardless of broader market performance.”

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Jessica Cairns

As the responsible investment landscape matures, it is no longer enough to simply “tick the box” on ESG and sustainability. The issues shaping portfolio risk and return are becoming more complex, interconnected and dynamic. For investors, this means sharpening the lens on what matters most and looking more closely at how well portfolios are positioned for the structural forces shaping tomorrow’s markets.

We recently launched our fourth annual ESG and Sustainability Report^[1] detailing our insights from nearly 200 company engagements, on-the-ground research trips, and desktop reviews completed throughout 2024. In this we have identified eight thematics and 30 key topics emerging as the defining issues for investors. These thematics go to the heart of how companies create value, manage risk and earn trust in an increasingly transparent and interconnected world. For investors, these themes, a few of which are detailed below, offer both a framework for making investment decisions, managing risk and a compass for evaluating long-term portfolio resilience and emerging issues.

Cybersecurity and AI: On the rise

A clear trend is the increased engagement with companies to improve transparency around cyber preparedness and AI governance. Across our 200 company engagements in 2024, 20% discussed digital technology and data. In 2022, this was only 7% of engagements – reflecting the increased materiality of this issue from a risk perspective for all organisations.

Today, cybercrime is one of the most material topics across the ESG spectrum. It is an issue which is relevant to almost all companies and the risk management approach is difficult to assess.

Cyber incidents are increasing in both frequency and severity, with real implications for corporate reputation and shareholder value. The CrowdStrike outage in July 2024, which caused 8.5 million global computer systems to crash, was not linked to a cyber crime event however, it did shine a light on the world’s growing reliance on cloud connected and digital systems. It highlights the importance of assessing the risk of events such as scams, ransomware attacks, bad actor breaches and theft, and general data breaches from technology or process failures.

The increasing number of generative AI use cases throughout everyday business is also an area with growing ESG relevance. While the integration of AI presents productivity benefits, it raises new questions about data ethics, energy consumption, bias, and workforce disruption. Last year Alphinity, together with CSIRO, released an open-source responsible AI framework and toolkit to help investors navigate the accelerating AI opportunity. AI is predicted to transform entire industries and offer substantial efficiency gains, and while not typically associated with an ESG lens, we see this as a way for investors to assess the impact of AI across their investment.

The investment implication is clear: firms that are proactive on these fronts are better positioned to avoid material downside risk and to capture upside opportunities in digital transformation.

Social licence: Instrumental to company success

A company’s social licence to operate is a measure of the level of trust between an organisation and its key stakeholders. If a company loses the trust of its stakeholders, its social licence to operate is also impacted and often results in negative consequences for its operating conditions. This impact can be as a result of regulatory intervention, community protests and disruption, customer-related controversies, unfavourable news and media, corruption and bribery, and shareholder activism.

The tricky part is measuring it. In 2024, the percentage of engagements related to social licence increased to 24%, up from 5% in 2022. Much of this focus was related to how a company can measure its social licence and how investors can get better transparency on this. For example in 2023, we established two engagement objectives for Rio Tinto; firstly, to update its remuneration structure to better incentivise management to mitigate ESG risks such as related to social licence; Secondly, to improve the measurement of social licence including insights from key stakeholders like traditional owners.

Climate and biodiversity: A wider lens

Climate change has long been a focus for Alphinity, and our latest report reflects to the expanding focus to also include nature and biodiversity loss as material financial risks.

Climate change and the disorderly transition pose a considerable systemic risk to the global economy and remain a central concern for investors – but the lens is widening. Biodiversity loss is continuing to increase in materiality across our holdings with implications for agriculture, resource security and supply chains. Australia is particularly exposed given our economy’s reliance on nature-dependent industries in agriculture and industry, as well as the nature impacts imposed by mining, energy and infrastructure.

Woolworths and Coles for instance received their first shareholder proposals related to nature-related impacts in 2024. South32 also experienced a biodiversity-related controversy which impacted it’s share price.

Initiatives like the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) are helping businesses and investors begin to quantify exposure, and the Federal Government has also made changes to environmental regulations to strengthen penalties and regulatory oversight. In 2024, Alphinity became an early adopter of the TNFD. We are committed to begin disclosing in line with the TNFD Recommendations within our next ESG and Sustainability Report, covering the 2025 calendar year.

Human rights and modern slavery: From policy to practice

We have a responsibility to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that human rights and modern slavery violations do not occur in the companies in which we invest, including in their supply chains. This is both an ethical responsibility as well as a material investment imperative.

Supply chains remain the highest priority for human rights and modern slavery risks based on exposure to high-risk commodities and regions. Across our 2024 holdings, Supply chain risks hold the highest exposure with 20% of companies having a medium or high risk. According to our assessment, operational exposure to modern slavery risks is largely negligible, however, this can still be very material for certain companies such as those engaged in agriculture. 17% were assessed as low risk due to direct operations in high-risk countries such as China, India and Malaysia.

Regulatory momentum around human rights due diligence is accelerating, setting a higher bar for companies and investors alike.

These thematics, and the others detailed in our latest report, are not academic. They group the 30 most material ESG issues for our 2024 holdings and are established using a bottom-up materiality assessment of more than 40 ESG topics. The ESG landscape is not static and there can be no doubt that over the past year, in a changing political environment, ESG has become a polarising issue.

Regardless of the political environment, we know that our responsible investing efforts will help us to achieve our ultimate goal of delivering attractive long-term risk adjusted returns for our clients.

By Jessica Cairns, Head of ESG and Sustainability

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[1] https://www.alphinity.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Alphinity-2024-ESG-and-Sustainability-Report.pdf

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Jessica Cairns

Boutique active equities fund manager, Alphinity Investment Management (Alphinity), has unveiled a partnership with Australia’s national science agency, CSIRO, to develop a framework to help the investment community assess responsible artificial intelligence (AI) practices and integrate into ESG considerations.

Informed by interviews with businesses using or planning to use AI, the year-long research program will result in a report identifying current best practice and provide a framework to assess, manage and report on responsible AI risks.

Responsible AI is the practice of developing and using AI systems in a way that provides benefits to individuals, groups, and wider society, while minimising the risk of negative consequences.

Alphinity’s Head of ESG and Sustainability, Jessica Cairns, said AI technology was presenting investors with a new set of ever evolving challenges and greater insight was needed to guide investment decisions.

“AI will present significant opportunities to improve company performance, but we foresee potential risks in areas of governance, social licence, and operations, and investors will increasingly need to identify these.

“We’re inviting companies that are more advanced in their adoption of AI, or are actively exploring AI application, to participate and share information with us on their experience and thinking on the impact and responsible application of artificial intelligence across every facet of their business,” Ms Cairns said.

“Our work with CSIRO will contribute to increased awareness and knowledge of responsible AI considerations within the investment community. We hope the case studies and other data will also assist companies at the start of their AI journey to implement best-practice considerations,” Ms Cairns said.

“From our perspective, it will create a foundation for the longer-term development of frameworks for analysis and robust modelling of responsible AI within our broader set of ESG performance and risk analysis.”

CSIRO Research Director Liming Zhu, who leads the Responsible AI Initiative, said: “This unique partnership will combine the investment community’s deep expertise with CSIRO’s cutting-edge scientific understanding of AI risks and opportunities. This collaboration aims to empower Australian businesses to attract global investments.”

“Australia can lead the world in the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence, but to practically achieve that we must bring diverse skill sets together and develop measurements and tools to support implementation.

“This project will give us insights into the AI risks and opportunities companies are grappling with and provide guidance around best practices that will help both investors and companies.”

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Jonas Palmqvist

Leading Australian and global equities fund manager Alphinity Investment Management has listed its’ two rapidly growing global equities funds on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

The two funds that recently listed and celebrated via an ASX bell ringing ceremony today are the actively managed Alphinity Global Equity Fund (Managed Fund) (ASX: XALG) and the Alphinity Global Sustainable Equity Fund (Managed Fund) (ASX: XASG).

Alphinity Global Portfolio Manager Jonas Palmqvist said: “Both of these funds give retail investors easy access to a global portfolio of companies that have been identified as undervalued as they enter or are about to enter an earnings upgrade cycle and can deliver positive earnings surprises.”

The Alphinity Global Equity Fund – XALG – offers a long-only portfolio of 25-40 leading quality global companies highly diversified across countries, sectors and currencies that have been identified as undervalued and within an earnings upgrade cycle.

“Alphinity’s deeply experienced global team combines fundamental research with specific quantitative analytics to uncover stocks that can deliver ‘earnings surprises’ to drive outperformance,” Mr Palmqvist said.

Since inception in 2015 XALG’s underlying fund has returned 11.1% p.a., and 8.5% p.a. over the past three years, outperforming the benchmark by 1.5% p.a. and 2.3% p.a. respectively(1).

The Alphinity Global Sustainable Equity Fund (ASX: XASG) provides a diversified portfolio of 25-40 leading global sustainable listed companies which are assessed by Alphinity as having a net positive alignment to  the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, exceed Alphinity’s minimum Environmental, Social and Governance criteria, and also offer attractive prospective returns.

A committee including reputable external experts helps to ensure the fund stays true to its’ charter and also drives active engagement with companies. Since its launch in June 2021 XASG’s underlying fund has returned 2.3% p.a, outperforming the benchmark by 1.1% p.a.(1) Both funds use the MSCI World Net Total Return Index (AUD) as a benchmark.

Alphinity Investment Management is supported by Challenger Limited subsidiary Fidante, which forms long term alliances with talented investment teams to support and grow specialist investment management businesses.

Fidante is one of Australia’s largest active fund managers and currently has 17 investment manager partnerships, with more than 60 funds, covering a wide range of asset classes. Combined, they manage approximately $70 billion(2) in total funds under management.

Challenger Chief Executive Funds Management, Victor Rodriguez said the listings were part of Fidante’s strategy to further expand its range of products and enhance the customer experience by making it easier for customers to access Fidante’s investment managers.

“Australia’s growing ETF market is driven by customer demand for easy, any time access to high performing liquid products. Over the past 12 months we have invested in enhancing our digital capabilities to enable Fidante to further grow our series of active ETFs to meet this customer demand.

“Fidante now has over $817m million (3) in FUM invested across 4 active ETF strategies, and we look forward to bringing more funds to market in 2023,” Mr Rodriguez said.

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Jonas Palmqvist

Leading Australian and global equities fund manager Alphinity Investment Management is lowering the management fees of its two global equity funds from 1.00% to 0.75% (inclusive of GST and net of RITC) from 1 May 2022.

“Both Alphinity and Fidante Partners are focused on ensuring costs to investors remain appropriate and in line with market expectations, and our new management fee structure is a reflection of this,” Alphinity Global Portfolio Manager Jonas Palmqvist said.

The fee reduction follows a review of the funds by Alphinity and Fidante Partners, the responsible entity for both funds. Management fees of both funds have been reduced by a quarter to 0.75% (inclusive of GST and net of RITC). Performance fees for both funds will remain the same.

The Alphinity Global Equity Fund seeks to invest in a concentrated set of quality companies, identified as undervalued and within an earnings upgrade cycle. Since its inception in December 2015 to 28 February 2022, the Alphinity Global Equity Fund has returned 13.3% p.a. net of fees*, ahead of the benchmark MSCI World Net Total Return Index (AUD) return of 11.9% p.a.

The Alphinity Global investment team, which operates under a flat structure of five portfolio managers, also manages the Alphinity Global Sustainable Equity Fund, a strategy that retains the approach of the flagship global fund but also applies rigorous sustainable and ESG methodology to invest in a portfolio of leading global companies that support one or more of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, have strong ESG practices^ and offer attractive prospective returns. The fund has returned 9.6% net of fees* to 28 February

2022 since its inception in June 2021, against the same benchmark’s return of 7.5%.

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Willcocks has amassed more than 15 years’ experience of international equity markets while working for Citi, in roles that have been based in Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney. For the past six years he has been Citi’s Director and Head of International Equity Sales, APAC, based in Sydney.

In his new role he will have responsibility for industrials sector investments in the $7bn Alphinity Global Equity Fund (Fund) which has returned 14.7% p.a. after fees since inception in December 2015 to 31 January 2022 against the benchmark MSCI World Net Total Return Index (AUD) return of 13.1%.

Alphinity Global Portfolio Manager Jonas Palmqvist said the appointment increased Alphinity’s global portfolio managers to five after Mary Manning (Consumer Discretionary and Communication Services) and Trent Masters (Technology) joined the business last year.

“Chris brings a wide-ranging knowledge and experience of global equities to our growing team, and he has been a key, collaborative partner to us at Alphinity Global since we launched our funds over six years ago. We are looking forward to him making a major contribution to our co-portfolio manager model,” Palmqvist said.

Investment veteran Jeff Thomson, who covers financials, staples and real estate, rounds out the global portfolio management team, which is supported by a five-strong specialist resources team.

The Alphinity Global Equity Fund seeks to invest in a concentrated set of quality companies, identified as undervalued and within an earnings upgrade cycle. It identifies these companies using a distinctive combination of fundamental analysis and quantitative inputs.

Alphinity Investment Management is supported by Challenger Limited subsidiary Fidante Partners, which forms long term alliances with talented investment teams to support and grow specialist investment management businesses.

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Jeff Thomson

Leading Australian and global equities boutique fund manager Alphinity Investment Management has launched a global sustainable strategy that aims to invest in quality global companies which are supporting the transition to a more sustainable future and are also identified as undervalued and within an earnings upgrade cycle.

The new Alphinity Global Sustainable Equity Fund (Fund) retains the concentrated nature and investment approach of the well-established Alphinity Global Equity Fund, which has returned 14.4% p.a.^[1] after fees since inception in December 2015 (as at 30 June 2021), but also applies the same rigorous sustainable and ESG methodology currently used by the Alphinity Australian Sustainable Share Fund (launched in 2010).

The new Fund seeks to invest in a diversified portfolio of leading sustainable companies that offer attractive financial returns, have strong ESG practices, and are aligned with one or more of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)^[2]. These SDGs cover key themes like equality, promoting healthier lives and well being, building resilient infrastructure and combating climate change.

A Sustainable Compliance Committee, including two recognised independent ESG experts, supported by Jessica Cairns, Alphinity’s ESG and Sustainability Manager, provide specialist insights and also ensure the Fund remains ‘true-to-label’ and aligned with the fund’s Charter.

Portfolio Manager, Jeff Thomson said he and the Alphinity Global team focus on companies that ‘do good’ and ‘do it well’. They also seek to avoid companies that are involved in activities that are incompatible with the objectives of the Fund, may be harmful to society and are inconsistent with the UN SDGs.

“We have a zero revenue tolerance for producers of tobacco and controversial weapons. We also don’t support companies generating more than 5% of their revenues from the production of fossil fuels, controversial fuels such as uranium, gold mining where gold is the primary purpose of the mine, factory farming, live exports, predatory lending, alcohol and gambling, and old growth forestry logging, for example.”

Mr Thomson said other no-go companies were those that have demonstrated poor management of ESG issues such as breaching human rights principles, unnecessary pollution or avoiding a fair share of tax payments.

“When we come across a grey area related to ESG issues or alignment with the SDGs the Sustainable Compliance Committee assesses the matter and determines whether Alphinity can support the company’s activities.  The Committee includes Elaine Prior, an award-winning ESG pioneer and former managing director at Citi Research in Sydney, and lawyer Melissa Stewart, a Canadian modern slavery and human rights expert.

“Only those companies that meet these stringent sustainability conditions are then assessed against Alphinity’s investment philosophy and process to ensure they are quality undervalued companies in or entering an earnings upgrade cycle and are therefore candidates for our portfolio,” Mr Thomson said.

Alphinity Investment Management is supported by Challenger Limited subsidiary Fidante Partners, which forms long term alliances with talented investment teams to support and grow specialist investment management businesses.

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[1] Source: Fidante Partners: returns are calculated after fees have been deducted and assume distributions have been reinvested. No allowance is made for tax when calculating these figures. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.
[2] ‘Strong ESG practices’ means companies that are not rated B or C by our external ESG research provider, MSCI, subject to review by the Sustainable Compliance Committee.

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Mary Manning

Leading Australian and global equities boutique fund manager Alphinity Investment Management has added two highly experienced portfolio managers to its global equities fund management team.

Mary Manning will join Alphinity in mid-July. She brings 25 years of international experience to the Alphinity global team, most recently as a portfolio manager of the Ellerston Capital Asia Growth Fund, India Fund and Ellerston Asian Investments listed investment company.

Mary had been with Ellerston since 2012, and prior to that worked in several investing roles between 2001 and 2010 at Oaktree Capital as well as Soros Funds Management, based in New York and Singapore. Mary has completed an MBA at Harvard Business School and a PhD in Economics at the University of Sydney, where she was an associate lecturer. She started her career in 1996 as an investment banking analyst at Citigroup, based in New York, London and Moscow.

Trent Masters, who has more than 20 years of investment experience, has joined Alphinity from Global Evolution Capital, which he founded in 2019 and where he managed a global absolute return fund, built around key growth themes and industrial evolutionary trends.

Prior to this, he spent more than a decade at Colonial First State Global Asset Management, primarily as a senior analyst covering a range of sectors, and also as a portfolio manager of global long-short funds and hedge fund-of-funds.

Trent started his career at Commonwealth Bank in 1999 in a strategy, mergers and acquisition team and holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil) from Sydney University and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from FINSIA.

In their new roles Mary and Trent will help manage the $4bn Alphinity Global Equity Fund (Fund) which has returned 13.4% p.a. after fees since inception in December 2015 to 31 May 2021^[1]. The Fund seeks to invest in a concentrated set of quality companies, identified as undervalued and within an earnings upgrade cycle. Trent and Mary will also be actively involved in managing the newly launched Alphinity Global Sustainable Equity Fund.

Alphinity Global Portfolio Manager Jonas Palmqvist said he and fellow Global Portfolio Managers Jeff Thomson and Nikki Thomas are delighted to welcome the pair as colleagues and partners.

“Trent and Mary bring a tremendous depth of experience and investment pedigree to Alphinity that will help reinforce and sustain the track record of excellence we have been able to establish and embed. Importantly, their complementary, diverse backgrounds bring new and alternative perspectives that will enrich discussions as we work though our well-established investment process,” he said.

Alphinity Investment Management is supported by Challenger Limited subsidiary Fidante Partners, which forms long term alliances with talented investment teams to support and grow specialist investment management businesses.

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[1] Source: Fidante Partners: returns are calculated after fees have been deducted and assume distributions have been reinvested. No allowance is made for tax when calculating these figures. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

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Elfreda Jonker

Leading Australian and global equities boutique fund manager, Alphinity Investment Management, has appointed experienced client portfolio manager Elfreda Jonker to its Sydney-based team.

Jonker has joined Alphinity from Talaria Asset Management where she was Director of Business Development. She brings two decades of financial markets and corporate experience to the firm, including more than 13 years at Deutsche Bank, where she served as Head of Equity Sales for the bank’s South African business.

Prior to this Jonker spent two years working for Goldman Sachs in New York, where she was a project manager for interest rate, foreign exchange and credit derivatives products. Previously she spent three years at Deloitte, in South Africa and Chicago, where she worked in the firm’s audit division. Jonker holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting (Honours) from the University of South Africa.

Alphinity Principal and Chief Executive Johan Carlberg said Jonker would serve as an important link between Alphinity’s investment and distribution teams.

“Elfreda is a welcome addition and adds significant experience to our team. Her role involves creating investment content for client marketing, representing our award-winning investment experts and working with Fidante to manage retail client relationships,” he said.

Jonker’s appointment follows that of Jessica Cairns to the newly created role of ESG and Sustainability Manager at Alphinity, in a move designed to support the firm’s efforts to more deeply integrate ESG-related matters across its domestic and global equities funds.

Alphinity Investment Management is supported by Challenger Limited subsidiary Fidante Partners, which forms long term alliances with talented investment teams to support and grow specialist investment management businesses.

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