Ninety One says global investment experience counts

For the second year in succession, Ninety One has won the coveted Raging Bull Award for South African Manager of the Year.

MARTIN HESSE reports

ASSET manager Ninety One attributes its Raging Bull Award for the South African Manager of the Year to the global nature of the company’s highly experienced investment team.

For the second year in a row, the company was crowned South African Manager of the Year at last week’s Raging Bull Awards, for the superior performance of its unit trust funds to the end of 2021. In second place was last year’s runner-up, Cape Town boutique asset manager Mi-Plan, and third was Coronation Fund Managers. The Offshore Manager of the Year award went to Melville Douglas, the offshore investment arm of the Standard Bank group.

The awards, hosted annually by Personal Finance, were sponsored this year by the JSE, Sanlam Investments, and Melville Douglas. The data suppliers were ProfileData and its subsidiary PlexCrown Fund Ratings. The ceremony, as last year, took the form of a video presentation, which can be viewed on the IOL News YouTube channel.

Apart from the Manager of the Year awards, eight Raging Bull Awards and 30 Raging Bull Certificates went to individual funds in local and offshore categories (see page 8).

LOCAL WINNER

Ninety One is one of the most well-established asset management companies in South Africa, with a highly experienced investment team that has a presence in major centres across the globe.

The company changed its name at the beginning of 2020, from Investec Asset Management to Ninety One, when it separated from Investec Bank. It has received many accolades at the Raging Bull Awards over the years.

In an interview with Personal Finance, Sangeeth Sewnath, deputy managing director at Ninety One, said winning the award for a second time in a row in the two years since the company’s demerger was further confirmation that investors could be as confident in Ninety One as they were in Investec Asset Management.

“We’ve spent a lot of time explaining to our clients that despite the demerger and the listing, what we do hasn’t changed, the people that they deal with haven’t changed, and I think this award emphasises and reinforces what we’ve been saying for the last two years,” Sewnath said.

When asked the reasons behind Ninety One’s performance over and above the performance of the markets (what is known in the industry as “alpha”), Sewnath pointed to the global nature of the company’s substantial investment team.

“We have over 250 investment professionals in our business, and more than two thirds of those people sit outside of South Africa – Hong Kong, London, New York, Singapore – and we think that has done two really important things for us: it has allowed us to become better money managers and it has allowed us to win this war on talent in the industry, because not only are people focused on SA-particular investments or stocks, but they have a far broader universe on which to focus on, and we’ve managed to attract and train a lot of talent on the back of this globally integrated business.”

SANGEETH SEWNATH, DEPUTY MANAGING DIRECTOR OF NINETY ONE

Sewnath said that while the Raging Bull Awards recognised performance over five years, it was a source of pride that over 20 and 30 years, the company’s track record was “absolutely stellar”.

Take, for example, its flagship multi-asset fund, the Ninety One Opportunity Fund: over 20 years it has delivered an annualised return of 13.92%, about 8% above inflation.

OFFSHORE WINNER

Mike Laws, the managing director of Melville Douglas, was thrilled to hear the news of his company’s award. “This win means the world to the Melville Douglas team.

The Raging Bull Awards have always been regarded as the top recognition for the unit trust industry in South Africa. Winning the coveted Offshore Management Company for 2021 award validates the work our team does in providing clients with long-term returns without putting capital at undue risk.

“As a private client asset manager, we look at risk differently. Benchmark performance tends to be shortterm in nature. Instead, we focus on a much longer timeframe, where volatility and ensuring no permanent loss of capital are more important to our clients. Winning this award, which measures five-year risk-adjusted returns across our global fund range, vindicates that what we promise our clients has been delivered: superior, risk-adjusted long-term returns,” Laws said.

HOW THE WINNING MANAGERS FARED

Each qualifying fund receives from one to five PlexCrowns, with a three-PlexCrown rating denoting average performance within a fund’s peer group. The managers are then given a weighted average PlexCrown rating on all their funds.

Ninety One

The winning South African manager scored an average 4.24 PlexCrowns over its 18 qualifying funds, which collectively had R222.8 billion under management at the end of last year. Four funds scored five PlexCrowns, seven scored an above-average four PlexCrowns, and four scored three PlexCrowns. The fivePlexCrown funds were the Ninety One Equity Fund and the manager’s three South African multi-asset funds: the Cautious Managed Fund, Managed Fund and Opportunity Fund.

Mi-Plan

The first runner-up scored an average 3.59 PlexCrowns over its eight qualifying funds, which collectively had R9.25 billion under management at the end of last year. Two funds, the Mi-Plan IP Global Macro Fund and the Mi-Plan IP Enhanced Income Fund, scored five PlexCrowns. Four funds scored three PlexCrowns.

Coronation

After a four-year absence, Coronation Fund Managers are back in the top three. The second runner-up scored an average 3.51 PlexCrowns over its 19 qualifying funds, which had assets under management of R316.78 billion at the end of last year. Two funds, the Coronation Equity Fund and the Coronation Smaller Companies Fund, scored five PlexCrowns. Five scored an above-average four PlexCrowns, and there were seven funds with three PlexCrowns.

Melville Douglas

The winner of the Offshore Manager of the Year had three qualifying funds that it markets to South African investors, and they scored an average of four PlexCrowns. Two funds, the Melville Douglas Global Growth Fund (USD) and the Melville Douglas Income Fund (USD) achieved five PlexCrowns.