The late George Vassos

Omega Global Investors (Omega) will host a February tribute to its co-founder and former managing director, Mr George Vassos, and all the money raised will support the Rare Cancers Australia charity.

George passed away in December 2016 from cancer aged just 46 years. He was survived by his wife Shannon and three young daughters. A tribute and celebration of George’s life will be held on 6 February 2018 at the offices of PwC in Melbourne.

Mr Vassos was a co-founder and former managing director of Omega Global Investors, a $4 billion Melbourne-based global investment manager launched in 2008 by Andrew Gruskin, Mathew McCrum and George Vassos.
Mr McCrum said George will be remembered as a committed family man, a trusted mentor and business partner and an important figure in the Australian financial services industry.

“George will be remembered as a loved and valued member of the broader community and as a role model for professionalism and integrity in the funds management sector. This event will commemorate his life’s achievements and celebrate his memory,” said Mr McCrum.

“All funds raised from the tribute will go to support Rare Cancers Australia, a charity close to George’s heart. George believed strongly in bringing people together to make a difference in the community,” said Mr McCrum.
Prior to co-founding Omega, Mr Vassos was employed for several years at Vanguard in Melbourne, where he helped to establish the fund manager’s relationships with financial advisors and others in the financial community. Vanguard has created an internal award in Mr Vassos’s name in recognition of his contribution to the Australian funds management industry. Before Vanguard, Mr Vassos also spent several years employed with the Colonial Group.

Tickets to the tribute are available for $150 per person and bookings can be made here. Guests will enjoy an evening of cocktails and canapes. Two-time Paralympian Kelly Cartwright will speak at the event. A silent auction will be conducted and raffles sold and all proceeds will be donated to Rare Cancers Australia.

SuperEd, the leading digital advice provider, and its Co-Founder, Jeremy Duffield, are also sponsoring the event.  Jeremy was Founding Managing Director of Vanguard Investments Australia when George joined. “I remember George fondly for his effervescence and drive, which helped the firm establish a beachhead in a new market for us. He was great as part of our team. We’re pleased to support this benefit for Rare Cancers Australia in remembrance of George.”

Andrew Gruskin, fellow co-founder, said George’s legacy would be long lasting. “Despite his absence, we are determined to carry forward the legacy and influence of George. The event will honour George, his family and his life.”

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The late George Vassos

The Directors and co-workers at Omega Global Investors (Omega) wish to pay tribute to their beloved friend, co-founder and passionate managing director, Mr George Vassos.

George, aged a young 47, passed away last week following unforeseen medical complications. He is survived by his wife Shannon and three young daughters.

“Positive, warm, personable and smart, our firm is proud of an impressive legacy left by George who will be terribly missed by all of us and a many number of people touched by his life who call him a friend,” said Omega co-founder Mathew McCrum.

“Success is measured in many ways. For us it’s simple. Many of Omega’s valued clients have also become our friends, and this unique measure of trust and mutual success is due in no small part to the work ethic, client focus and grand humour of George.

“Rarely in our industry do you see great integrity, drive and genuine enthusiasm rolled into one human being. George was one such individual.”

Andrew Gruskin, fellow co-founder, said the entrepreneurial spirit that conceived Omega and has driven it to carve out a highly-valued asset management business was built on the core principles of client service, integrity and transparency. “Each of those reflects well on the influence of George,” he said.

“When we launched Omega, we adopted the motto: ‘begin with the end in mind’. This was about the way we sought to manage other people’s money. Of course, none of us anticipated an outcome in 2016 without George playing his usual, larger than life role in it.

“Despite his absence, we are determined to carry forward the legacy and influence of George. The best way we can honour him is to continue being successful on behalf of our clients, the business he co-founded and the young family and wife he has left behind.

“George Vassos is one of the best our industry has produced. He was a role model for professionalism and integrity in a wealth management sector that has a public image for being short on these qualities in recent times.

“We want the industry to know that it does have the capacity to make a positive and meaningful contribution to the greater good of its investors, and that there are great people, like George, working in our sector that hold up these virtues as the ultimate objective of our collective effort.”

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George Vassos

Uniting Financial Services (Uniting) has awarded an AUD $100 Million global credit mandate to Omega Global Investors (Omega) in a further sign that institutional investors are seeking asset management partnerships beyond the ‘one size fits all’ product approach.

Omega has pioneered its coveted ‘investment co-design’ model to deliver client outcomes as its primary focus, supported by investment solutions based on a proprietary *Smart Beta Plus, factor-based investment approach.
Omega managing director George Vassos said the partnership with Uniting Financial Services began as a conversation to improve the fixed income portion of the client’s portfolio, simultaneously observing the ethical and environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards of the Uniting Church.

“We sat down with Uniting’s investment team and said: ‘OK, Omega’s systems and processes can filter out, or in, any number of factors across the ESG spectrum’. So that was a big tick. Next, it was a matter of co-designing the return and risk outcomes desired by the fund, and demonstrating our capacity for actively managing to this overall outcome within the global credit asset class.

“We are pleased to have secured this significant mandate, and we look forward to developing our working partnership with Uniting’s Warren Bird and his team,” Mr Vassos said.

Warren Bird, Executive Director, Treasury & Investments said global credit was a new investable asset class for Uniting, and so the choice of underlying manager demanded careful and specific pre-requisites.

“Omega demonstrated its capability for both partnering with us and also meeting some fairly stringent ESG and ethical hurdles,” Mr Bird said.

“Credit is an important component of our overall portfolio exposure given our need for reliable income and capital preservation. We looked to offshore credit to achieve broader exposure to a wider range of credit risk and return than we could find investing in domestic credit securities.”

Mr Vassos concluded: “This is further vindication for Omega with its motto: begin with the end in mind. This requires not only taking a holistic view of investable markets, but carefully interrogating the underlying factors for the benefit of investors to deliver to stated investment outcomes,”

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George Vassos

The global low interest rate, low yield investment environment has prompted a number of new trends in the way that Australia’s largest institutional investors source and measure professional asset management services.

Omega Global Investors managing director George Vassos says larger investors are increasingly seeking discrete mandates that are co-designed in direct collaboration with investment managers, usually against specific risk parameters and target performance outcomes.

“We see a distinct trend has emerged whereby investment managers and large funds are talking directly to solve and co-create outcomes based solutions, often across multi asset class and risk parameters,” Mr Vassos said.

“This investment co-design trend speaks to a number of systemic industry responses as Australia’s growing asset pool looks for new sources of risk-adjusted portfolio returns. The underlying trend to in-source research and manager selection is part of this shift, and signals a welcome broadening and maturing of the institutional marketplace,” Mr Vassos said.

“A great example for our firm is that many people are surprised to learn we manage $1 billion in growth assets including a global listed infrastructure mandate, the parameters for which were not only based on our outcomes-based, risk controlled management style, but were co-designed around a portfolio of global growth assets at the outset with the client.”
Mr Vassos said the underlying trend was not a threat to traditionally intermediated manager selection processes, but denotes a renewed effort to explore more innovative pathways in the search for superior, risk adjusted return outcomes.

“Strategic partnerships look to remain a permanent fixture as institutional investors also seek to differentiate and diversify their asset allocation processes and we welcome the positive spirit in which the industry has embraced the growing trend,” Mr Vassos said.

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George Vassos, Managing Director of Omega, believes the last few years have seen a fundamental economic shift to the East – and that investors have finally recognised the fact.

“Asian corporations have strong balance sheets relative to their global sector peers and often with much less risk, which makes them an attractive option for investors looking for superior risk adjusted returns,” said Mr Vassos.

“Banks are just one example. The European and US banks have certainly had their issues over the last few years and those are continuing. On the other hand, their Asian counterparts, such as ICICI Bank and OCBC Bank, have experienced strong growth, strong balance sheets and have a far more positive long-term outlook with a lower probability of downgrade or default,” said Mr Vassos.

According to Mr Vassos, Omega is one of the few investment managers that saw the potential of Asian corporate bonds prior to them becoming more widely favoured.

“Omega’s Corporate Bond fund has had a 40 per cent allocation to Asian corporate bonds, excluding Japan, since its inception in 2009. Our proprietary risk-controlled methodology uses key criteria such as profit, liquidity, gearing and solvency to assess risk and allow us to identify quality securities for our clients.  Using this methodology, we were able to identify the quality securities well ahead of the pack,” said Mr Vassos.

Mr Vassos went on to explain that the corporate bonds Omega has selected are underpinned by strong fundamentals, and therefore have a strong, long term positive outlook.

“At Omega we expect to see an increased demand for Asian corporate bonds over the coming year as growth in the region continues.  We’re particularly looking at corporations issuing bonds in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore that are showing signs of maintaining that growth over the next few years,” said Mr Vassos.

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“Institutional investors increasingly want access to both the domestic and global inflation-linked bond markets, allowing them to make tactical decisions regarding allocations between the two based on their views of global market conditions,” Omega Managing Director George Vassos said.

“This value proposition for investors is supported by strong growth, with both domestic and international inflation-linked bonds returning more than six per cent over the last six months, in a time of high volatility in the global markets.”

Omega began managing mandates for both Australian and global inflation-linked bonds in the past 12 months as the institutional market looked to increase allocations to this asset class.

“The increasing number of baby boomers heading into retirement this decade has shifted the focus from investment strategies relevant for the accumulation phase of a superannuation plan to those that are more in line with the objectives of a retiree – a concentration on income and a return on investment over the rate of inflation,” Mr Vassos said.

“This market wants to increase their exposure to asset classes that deliver consistent income and don’t diminish the purchasing power of their retirement pool.”

Mr Vassos said the growth of both domestic and international inflation-linked bonds is linked to the global demographics of superannuation members and the expectation that inflation will generally increase in the next 5-10 years.

“Inflation is definitely at the forefront of the Reserve Bank’s mind in Australia, plus there is the broad expectation that it will pick up around the world – for example China recorded an annualised inflation rate of 6.4 per cent in June,” Mr Vassos said.

Mr Vassos said Omega is one of the few boutique managers to have a mandate for both domestic and international inflation-linked bonds, enabling investors to tailor their allocations between the two to suit their needs. 

He said the increasing appetite for Australian inflation-linked bonds would likely grow the supply and depth in the marketplace, with more issuance expected from Australian governments, both at federal and state level.

“Increasingly, investors are looking for asset classes which are CPI linked or fixed income as a total asset class, and this really fits with our capability across the defensive asset spectrum,” Mr Vassos said.

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