James Packer’s Ellerston Capital, which tried unsuccessfully to poach Perpetual Investment’s head of equities John Sevior, has now lost its veteran long/short manager to that organisation, which has also just poached from Platinum Asset Management to incubate an Asian equities strategy.

 

Paul Skamvougeras will manage the Perpetual Wholesale Share-Plus Long/Short Fund (Share Plus), after seven years running a global long/short equity portfolio for Ellerston Capital.

Skamvougeras is essentially a replacement for Vasant Khilnani, who ran the short-side investment process for the Share Plus fund until his retirement from the industry in January. The new recruit is no stranger to Perpetual, having worked in the core Australian equities team (which is the source for Share Plus’ long ideas) for seven years to 2001.

Ellerston Capital was established as a specialist funds management subsidiary of CPH, the Packer family’s holding company, in 2004. It wasn’t long after this that James Packer began a concerted campaign to recruit John Sevior, a friend, into the business. However it’s understood Sevior has now made clear his intention to remain at Perpetual.

Meanwhile Perpetual has recruited Rosemary Tan from Platinum Asset Management, to work on an Asian equities strategy which the house has just incubated with $10 million from its own balance sheet.

The Asian equity strategy will build on Perpetual’s existing ability to own some offshore stocks within its Australian equities portfolios, and is in response to retail demand for specialist Asian equity product, according to chief operating officer for Australian equities, Cathy Doyle.

The strategy is being co-managed by Australian equity analysts Vince Pezzullo and Garry Laurence, with Tan being brought in for her experience on Platinum’s Asia Fund, analysing stocks across China and Hong Kong, as well as her fluent Mandarin language skills.