AMP Capital Investors has overhauled its Australian equities Capital Team, which manages $2 billion, replacing three of its members.
AMP Capital senior portfolio manager, Greg Barnes, said this involved a cultural change which involved altering team dynamics through changing old members and bringing in new blood in order to improve performance and investment outcomes for clients.
In the last five years to December 2010, the team’s fundamentally-driven Capital Approach has returned a gross 5.8 per cent, moderately above its S&P/ASX200 benchmark which returned 4.5 per cent.
Jonas Palmqvist and Andrew Lally join the team in existing positions as senior portfolio manager/analyst. Together they replace Simon Fitzgerald, who exited in August 2010 after 10 years with AMP to pursue a new career in investment banking, Michael Hughes who left in April 2010 and now works for Ord Minnett, and Hamish Carlilse who also left in April 2010 to join Merlon Capital Partners.
Thomas Young also joins the team, after completing the two year AMP Capital Graduate program, in a new position as assistant portfolio manager.
Jonas Palmqvist has joined the team from Swedbank Robur, one of the largest fund managers in Scandinavia, and brings to the team over 14 years’ experience in equity analysis and portfolio management, as well as an “international perspective” according to Barnes..
Lally transferred to the team late last year from AMP Capital’s fixed income team, where he was a senior portfolio manager and head of credit research.
Barnes said the team had been looking to fill the positions for a short while since the team overhaul last year.
“We’ll have one of the most well-resourced teams in the market looking at Australian equities going forward,” he said. “It really gives us a great platform and foundation to build portfolios for our clients that will perform well across a broad range of market conditions and really build on our investment process of doing proprietary research and identifying companies that can generate a higher return on invested capital.”
