The joint venture between Colonial First State and US quant manager Acadian Asset Management will launch its first products into the retail market – an Australian long-short and an Australian long-only fund – on Colonial’s FirstChoice platform in early March.

Acadian Asset Management currently manages close to $800 million in its global products for Australian institutional investors and in May last year formed an exclusive joint venture with Colonial First State to develop Australian equity products. The Australian funds will use Acadian’s quantitative approach which has been developed by the group’s American counterpart over the last 20 years. Chris Clayton, Acadian Australia chief executive officer, said the two Australian funds had already received strong institutional interest and the group was pleased to be able to offer them to retail investors. “We see funds managed in the long-short style as an attractive alternative – there’s a broader opportunity set to outperform but with market exposure similar to traditional Australian equity funds,” he said. As part of its global quantitative process Acadian evaluates and monitors 20,000 companies in over 40 equity markets daily. Over the past decade it has analysed over 800 Australian stocks. Acadian describes its investment approach as a disciplined objective process with a view to finding undervalued companies that have strong prospects for outperformance.