Tower's light shines in awards

Tower has knocked BNZ Investment Management off its perch and been named as this year’s FundSource Fund Manager of the Year Award.

Friday, October 29th 2004, 6:00AM

Tower’s victory ends a remarkable period where BNZ has been crowned top manager for three consecutive years, and also picked up the Morningstar Fund Manager of the Year award during that time.

While BNZ have dominated the number one spot, Tower has always been close behind, being runner-up in 2000, 2001 and 2003.

FundSource business manager Tim Anderson says Tower were a clear winner this year: “There was light between them and the runner-up.”

He says two areas were Tower scored well were its consistent performance across the four main asset classes, and its stable personnel.

“They performed solidly across all asset classes,” he says.

“A stand out feature of Tower has been their people retention,” Anderson says.

Besides winning the top award Tower also won the international equities, diversified balanced and diversified defensive categories and was runner up in the property sector.

Tower New Zealand head of investment business Paul Bevin was happy to win the award, albeit slightly low key. “I think it is a recognition of reasonably consistent good performance,” he says. "It’s very pleasing.”

He says in the international equities sector, GAM - that manages the Global Gateway Fund - has neutralised the worst of the downside “while riding some of the upturn and getting some extra kick.”

He says the two winning balanced funds have a lower cost structure which helped them.

The major asset in the property fund, the Bayfair mall in Mt Manganui, has done very well after an expansion was completed.

Bevin says Tower are about to restructure the fund to make it more “available and accessible to retail investors.”

Other highlights of the awards were the emergence of niche mortgage managers plus a broad spread of winners.

Anderson says the mortgage managers tend to be “smaller, specialised and more efficient companies” than some of the larger mortgage funds.

“They are managers that are growing and that’s unusual in this environment.”

While these funds maybe relatively unknown to the wider investment and advisory community Anderson declares FundSource is “entirely comfortable with what they are doing.”

For a full list of winners visit the Fund Manager of the Year Awards page here

To find out more about one of BNZ’s star products, its International Equity fund visit Special Reports.

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