Fantasy fund manager dream team: strikers

All eyes have turned to Brazil for the 20th Fifa World Cup, which kicked off last week. AsianInvestor has been revealing its own fantasy fund manager football XI.

We selected our team of 11 to reflect the realities of a football team, with a goalkeeper, four defenders, four midfielders and two strikers. To see our methodology, please click here.

Our performance data was provided independently by Mercer, Morningstar and eVestment. We would like to thank them for their support.

Last week we revealed our goalkeeper, Cameron Garlick of BlackRock; our central defensive partnership of Patrick Yeo from Fullerton Fund Management and Joep Huntjens of ING Investment Management; and our wing backs, Low Guan-Yi and Ooi Boon Peng, both of Eastspring Investments.

Earlier this week we unveiled our central midfield, with defensive midfielder Frankie Tai of Invesco and playmaker Linda Csellak of Manulife. And yesterday we revealed our right and left midfield, with Dale Nicholls of Fidelity on the right and designated captain Alistair Thompson from First State Investments on the left.

Today we announce our strikers. For attack we emphasised absolute performance over risk-adjusted returns. In the coveted no10 shirt we chose Tony Waters, who runs the Ausbil Australian Microcap Fund. This equities boutique tilts its portfolio dynamically and has delivered an annualised return of 43.6% over four years.

Playing alongside him is David Baran, representing the sole hedge fund on our list. Baran co-founded Symphony Financial Partners in Tokyo and helps to run the firm’s Value Realisation Fund, which targets turnaround stories. Annualized performance of 37.5% demanded his inclusion in our team.

AsianInvestor’s select XI is published in our June magazine, available online. For an alternative, and more football-focused view on the 20th world cup, why not try www.worldcupstory.com. This site has been launched by Haymarket's own finance director, David Newton. You can find his daily rant here.

Meanwhile here are the write-ups for AsianInvestor’s two strikers, which completes our starting lineup. Let us know what you think of our project, and perhaps send us your own team/player suggestions, by writing to [email protected]. Enjoy the rest of the world cup!

10 STRIKER
Tony Waters, Ausbil Australian Microcap Fund
Tony Waters gives our select XI real firepower upfront. Ausbil is a specialist Australian equities boutique serving superannuation funds, institutional investors and master trust clients. It has shown consistency in delivering returns via a core investment process. As a segment of the market, the micro-cap universe is dynamic but inefficient as it is under-researched. Ausbil seeks to exploit these inefficiencies through this microcap fund, which was incepted in February 2010. It tilts its portfolio to be value or growth orientated at different stages of the cycle, with the determinant of a stock’s weighting being its liquidity. It has delivered an annualised return of 43.6% and excess return of 48.7% over the S&P/ASX Emerging Companies benchmark, with a Sharpe ratio of 1.4 and an information ratio of 3.6. Waters joined Ausbil in October 2008 and has been running this fund since inception. Previously he spent seven years at CCZ Equities as senior industrial analyst, specialising in mid- and small-caps. He has an eye for a gap to slip between defenders, a goal poacher’s instinct.

11 STRIKER
David Baran, SFP Value Realisation Fund
The sole hedge fund in our list, we think David Baran can form a successful strike partnership with Tony Waters of Ausbil. Both seek to exploit inefficiencies via value investing, so should have a good understanding with each other on the field. Tokyo-based Symphony Financial Partners was co-founded by Baran, a former Goldman Sachs trader, and Kazuhiko Shibata, who worked as an M&A and real estate banker at Nomura Securities. Their Value Realisation Fund seeks out companies with depressed valuations with strong operating businesses and balance sheets. It buys stakes and works with management to drive the share price higher before exiting, aiming to realise 2-3x gains within four years. Performance has been exceptional, with an annualised return of 37.5% gross of fees and excess return over the Topix of 31.7%. It also delivered an information ratio of 1.7 and a Sharpe ratio of 1.6. Given that Baran focuses on Japan and Waters on Australia, there’s no chance they’ll get in each other’s way. Baran is another first-class finisher.