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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Jonas Palmqvist

The Alphinity Global Equity Fund (the Fund) celebrated its third anniversary in December and was recently awarded a ‘Recommended’ rating by Zenith.

In addition, the Fund received a four-star Overall Morningstar Rating as at 31 December 2018. The strategy, which sits under the umbrella of leading Australian boutique fund manager, Alphinity Investment Management, is run by a separate team focused on global opportunities.

Alphinity Investment Management was established in July 2010 and built a formidable reputation for its consistent outperformance managing Australian equities. This success saw it add global capability to its team and launch the Fund on 21 December 2015. The Fund has outperformed MSCI World Net Return (AUD) across all reported time periods to 31 December 2018*, returning 8.2% per annum since inception, 11.5% per annum over two years, and 2.4% over the past year, including the recent market correction (all figures net of fees).

Alphinity’s global fund is managed by four portfolio managers, each with more than 20 years of experience; Jonas Palmqvist, Jeff Thomson, Lachlan MacGregor and Nikki Thomas.

The team’s investment philosophy is to provide investors with an actively managed exposure to a high conviction portfolio of leading global companies with underappreciated earnings growth potential. It identifies these companies using a unique partnership between detailed analyst-driven fundamental research and specific targeted quantitative inputs.

In its rating report, Zenith described the Fund as ‘well managed’ by a ‘highly experienced’ team of investment professionals and said the team’s investment process was ‘intuitive and robust’. Alphinity’s global strategy has $1 billion of funds under management, of which around $37 million are from early investors in the retail Fund.

Jonas Palmqvist said the fund management team was appreciative of the institutional support the Fund had received in its first three years and was looking forward to bringing the Fund to retail investors this year now it has a strong track record.

“The key to our success and the recent Zenith rating has been what we call ‘conviction with consistency’” said Jeff Thomson. “The Fund typically holds only 30 to 45 stocks but with broad diversity across market sectors and regions. We focus on rigorously testing and refining our best ideas to the point where we have a high degree of comfort that the ones we invest in will achieve strong returns. As the world backdrop changes, we adapt the portfolio and this has seen the strategy outperform across all time periods since inception.”

Alphinity Investment Management is supported by its minority shareholder, Fidante Partners, the boutique funds management business of Challenger Limited.

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Ms Thomas spent 11 years at Magellan Financial Group, most recently as Head of Research and Portfolio Manager. She played an instrumental role in the growth of the boutique global investment company from start-up to managing more than $55bn when she left in December 2017.

Ms Thomas said “I am delighted to be joining Alphinity Investment Management as it heads into a very exciting chapter in its growth. It is an experienced, dynamic team with a robust and proven investment process delivering excellent and consistent performance for its clients. It is the perfect next venture for me.”

She joins Jonas Palmqvist, Lachlan MacGregor and Jeff Thomson in managing the Alphinity Global Equity Fund. Since its launch in December 2015, Alphinity’s Global Equity Fund has delivered an outstanding 11.4% per annum net of fees including 14.5% in the year to May 2018, 4.7% above the MSCI World ex Australia Net Total Return Index.

Alphinity Global Portfolio Manager Jonas Palmqvist said, “Ms Thomas, with her deep experience, analytical skills and sharp decision making ability is a terrific addition to our team and will help ensure we continue to build momentum after a strong year.” The Alphinity Global Equity Fund has enjoyed strong institutional and growing retail investor support resulting in steady fund inflows during 2018.

Separately, Alphinity’s Australian equity team has seen its Alphinity Sustainable Share Fund rated Highly Recommended by Lonsec and awarded Money Management/Lonsec 2018 Responsible Investments Fund Manager of the Year.

“Over the past eight years, Alphinity Investment Management has gone from strength to strength and is enjoying a period of steady acceleration. We continue to get traction in the Australian equities space which we are best known for and there is growing awareness of the performance of our flagship global equity fund which will soon pass the critical three-year mark,” Alphinity CEO Johan Carlberg said.

Alphinity Investment Management is partly owned by Fidante Partners, the boutique funds management business of Challenger Limited.

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