The unit trusts awards season is well under way. For years at the Financial Mail we sponsored the Micropal awards, run by Nigel Schechter and Karen Coleman. They later became the Morningstar awards when the Chicago-based business bought Micropal from Standard & Poor’s.
Coleman would insist that we had a higher quality methodology than our competitor — the Raging Bulls. But as they said — though this will only make sense to the over 50s — Betamax was a better product than VHS but still didn’t do as well.
Bruce Cameron at Independent Newspapers certainly found a catchy name for his awards, though I doubt he paid royalties to United Artists, the studio that produced what was arguably Robert De Niro’s best film. Soon raging bull became the generic term for a unit trust award. We tried our best to counter this, at one point even trying to advertise the Micropal trophies as “the awards without the bull”, but to little effect.
It was somewhat unfair that the then Association of Unit Trusts officially endorsed the Raging Bull awards, and all credit to Cameron for keeping them in his pocket.
The Raging Bulls have kept their Oscar-style format and still give quite a few awards. By the time Micropal evolved to Morningstar, we had seven sector awards, plus a larger manager and a smaller manager award.
This time neither of the awards went to the usual suspects. It certainly makes it more interesting when there isn’t a house that has a lock on awards.
Investec Asset Management, now Ninety One, won the Micropal awards for five consecutive years. These days the overall Raging Bull often goes to multimanagers, which blend third-party managers rather than pick shares themselves.
Last year the winner was Citadel Investment Services, which most of us would call an intermediary or financial adviser rather than a fund manager. This year the winner was Alexander Forbes Investments, previously known as Investment Solutions, South Africa’s largest multimanager.
The runner-up, Sasfin, won the award while its parent bank is imploding and has sold much of its operations to African Bank.
Some of the names that would have won Raging Bulls in the early days are still winning. Old Mutual won the small-cap category — not that this category attracts much money nowadays. John Biccard’s Ninety One Value Fund won the straight three-year performance.
A stalwart of the Forbes Large Manager Watch, Oasis, won the award for global property funds.
Within the Raging Bulls there are separate straight and risk-adjusted awards based on the industry categories. I would always pay more attention to the risk-adjusted awards. Orbis Balanced Fund, in its rand-based format, was the top global balanced fund over the five years.
But otherwise the awards were well spread between second-tier shops and micro boutiques. The firm 360NE probably deserves to be considered first-tier, and it is in terms of performance, though it has a smaller team than Investec, Coronation, Allan Gray or the firms tied to life offices.
The 36ONE SA Equity Fund is the only fund to win the three-year straight and five-year risk-adjusted awards in its category, domestic equity.
Truffle is also close to being considered a first-tier manager. It comprises most of the former RMB Asset Management team, led by Ian Power and Saul Miller. It had quite a modest night, though, taking silverware for Truffle Income Plus in the super dull category of short-term fixed income funds.
Another rising star firm, Fairtree, won for its not much more exciting ALBI Plus fund, a bond fund with just a dash of cayenne pepper or paprika.
An outstanding performer on the night was PortfolioMetrix, started by former RMB quants whizzkid Brandon Zietsman. It was initially positioned as a discretionary fund manager, but has now graduated into a hybrid multimanager/asset manager.
It won in two multi-asset categories, medium equity and income. This is a firm to watch, as it is designing products that meet the needs of intermediaries and their clients.
In the global equity category, the two winners couldn’t be more different, the Sygnia FANG AI Fund won the three-year straight category, and the Ranmore Global Value Equity Fund the five-year award.
The only thing they have in common is that both like to seek the limelight. Ranmore’s Sean Peche isn’t quite as well known as Sygnia boss Magda Wierzycka, but he would like to be. As Peche puts it in his frequent YouTube appearances, he wishes he ran more money.
Contrarius is a house that follows a similar philosophy to Ranmore — there are differences, but you need a powerful microscope to detect them. The Allan Gray heritage is apparent in the investment style and stock picking. Both have former Allan Gray chief investment officers — Andrew Lapping in the case of Ranmore, Stephen Mildenhall in the case of Contrarius.
Mildenhall’s firm also had a strong period, winning the three-year award for its balanced fund.
• Cranston, a financial journalist, is the author of ‘The Mavericks’, a new book about South African fund management.
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