Fund managers' report card

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Actuaries Melville Jessup Weaver rate fund managers' performance over the last quarter and the past year.

Sunday, February 6th 2000, 12:00AM

by Philip Macalister

The quarter
December was a very impressive quarter for fund managers with the average gross return being 9.1 per cent. This was achieved on the back of strong performances from the New Zealand and overseas share markets, with increases in the indices of 11.1 per cent and 15.8 per cent respectively.

Overseas markets again benefited from a surge in technology stocks, this created problems for managers with value based investment philosophies,

Fixed interest markets were flat with both local and overseas markets only just managing positive returns.

Armstrong Jones - They continue to achieve good above average returns. Interestingly they would have even better results if they had more assets allocated to overseas shares.

AMPAM - Its good net after tax results were heavily influenced by the tax free returns from its two share funds. An early decision to go passive has yielded good results for their investors. But looking at their actual sector performance results shows below average results in nearly all sectors in the last 12 months.

ANZAM - Their overall short term results have deteriorated with the exception of local fixed interest and cash.

AXA - Their results are clearly improving steadily, with good overseas shares and fixed interest results combined with good asset allocation outcomes.

BNZIM - Like AMPAM, BNZIM’s net performance results benefit from the tax free returns on their two share funds. With the exception of their local shares results their sector performance looks weak.

BTFM - They have achieved a major turn around in their performance in the last year, adding 7.8 per cent to their benchmark of which a staggering 6.9 per cnet was in the last quarter. Their major areas of success are overseas shares, which was for so long a problem for them, and asset allocation, where too often they failed to deliver what they had promised.

COLONIAL FIRST STATE - The last year has not been a success story. Their one area of some reasonable performance was in overseas share markets.

GUARDIAN TRUST FUNDS MANAGEMENT - Their recent results have disappointed when compared to their impressive 5-year figures. Their weakest area was overseas share markets, and they have since exited from Morgan Stanley Asset Management.

NEW ZEALAND FUNDS MANAGEMENT - While our knowledge of NZFM is limited, their numbers are impressive. They have strong share market performance and local fixed interest returns.

ROYAL & SUNALLIANCE - In the last year they switched their overseas investments to their UK parent and the returns have been impressive. But comparing their net to gross returns shows that they failed to take advantage of the tax free returns offered by passive share funds.

SPICERS PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT - They added substantial value compared to benchmark for the last quarter with major success achieved from their new overseas share manager Putnams.

TOWER ASSET MANAGEMENT - They are continuing to struggle badly from the results achieved from their US shares manager and their continuing decision to under weight overseas shares.

WESTPACTRUST INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT - Principally due to poor asset allocation decisions, they have lost momentum in the last quarter in their much needed drive to turn around their historical poor performance. They had a very good local fixed interest return for the quarter.

The following table shows how much value each manager added to its portfolio over various time period. The second table lists the actual funds which are used in the survey.

* No figures are given for GTFM as no benchmark asset allocations are available.

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