February 7, 2009
By Laura du Preez
TRIALPHA
Raging Bull Award for the Offshore Management Company of Year
TriAlpha Fund Managers scooped the 2008 Raging Bull Award for the offshore manager of the year from seven other qualifying managers at last week's award ceremony.
The manager's origins date back to 1997 when Absa bought into a London-based wealth management company, Stonehage. Originally, funds were set up in Jersey under the name of Absa Offshore and the asset management was outsourced.
Later, an asset management team was set up in London, and it and the fund manager took the TriAlpha name. Absa sold its shares in both companies, and by 2005 the management of TriAlpha had bought out 100 percent of the shares in both companies.
TriAlpha has remained active in South Africa but has developed a strong focus on hedge funds of funds outside of South Africa.
Cobus Kruger, TriAlpha's director of international investment, says the company focuses on low-volatility, low-risk funds. The manager has six Jersey-based funds registered with the Financial Services Board (FSB) that can be marketed in South Africa. Four of these funds are rated in the PlexCrown ratings system.
One of these funds is an International Bond Fund. This fund was the top performer over three and five years to the end of December among the 12 global bond funds registered with the FSB with the qualifying track records.
The International Bond Fund returned 23.33 percent a year over three years and 12.62 percent a year over five years, according to ProfileData. The bond fund won a Raging Bull certificate for its performance over three years in the global bond sub-category.
Kruger says the International Bond Fund benefited from its active decisions on whether to be in government bonds or corporate bonds. In the first part of last year, the fund was in government bonds and later it moved into corporate bonds in time to benefit from the capital gains in these instruments.
He says another factor that benefited the fund was its calls on which currencies to invest in: the fund was initially invested largely in United States dollars but moved out of these investments towards the end of last year.
The strong performance of TriAlpha's bond fund put it in a leading position relative to the other foreign fund managers in the fixed-interest sector.
TriAlpha also has a global asset allocation fund of funds registered in South Africa. Its Balanced Fund was the sixth-best performer over three years and the seventh-best performer over five years in the global asset allocation flexible sector.
The fund returned 7.21 percent a year over three years and 6.53 percent a year over five years.
This fund invests in a number of global and regional equity and fixed-interest funds, including the TriAlpha International Bond Fund.
TriAlpha's average score for asset allocation funds was middle-of-the range, with a rating of three PlexCrowns. When foreign management companies were ranked on the PlexCrown ratings of all their asset allocation funds, the top performers were Aviva, Franklin Templeton and Marriott.
In the equity fund sub-categories, TriAlpha has two global equity funds: the Equity Yield Fund and the Equity Alpha Fund. These funds were ranked 22nd and 27th out of the 40 global equity funds registered with the FSB.
The Equity Yield Fund returned 2.37 percent and the Equity Alpha Fund returned 1.57 percent a year for the three years to the end of December last year, while the Morgan Stanley Capital World index, the benchmark for this sub-category, returned 2.64 percent a year for the period.
The Yield fund invests directly in foreign share markets, while the Alpha fund invests in other collective investment funds that invest in foreign share markets.
TriAlpha's average PlexCrown rating for these two funds was below average compared with the average ratings other foreign managers achieved for their equity funds.
Kruger says equity funds have not been TriAlpha's primary focus, but the manager recently merged with a London investment advisory company, ACP Partners, boosting its equity team, and has plans to further strengthen this team.
Oasis was the leader among the foreign fund managers ranked on the average PlexCrown ratings of all their equity funds.
Despite TriAlpha's below-average equity PlexCrown rating, when this rating was combined with the ratings for its Balanced Fund and its International Bond Fund, TriAlpha came out with the highest score.
Investec was the runner-up in the overall rankings. Investec achieved above-average rankings for the management of equity funds and asset allocation funds, while its fixed-interest rating diluted its overall average rating.
Stanlib MultiManager was ranked third overall. The company achieved an above-average ranking for the management of fixed-interest funds and a below-average rating for equity funds.
Some other managers that did not qualify for an overall rating but that showed strong risk-adjusted performance as measured by the PlexCrowns in certain areas were: Oasis in the total equity and global equity sectors; Ashburton in the US equity, European equity and global asset allocation sectors; Orbis, Allan Gray's offshore partner, in the global equity and Japan equity sub-categories; Invesco in the Far East equity and the United Kingdom fixed-interest bond sub-categories; and Lloyds in the UK equity sector.
  
 
|
© 1999 - 2010 Personal Finance & Independent Online (Pty) Ltd. All rights reserved.