Tower declares war on costs

Tower Managed Funds, the merged Tower Trust Services and Trustees Executors group, has been launched.

Friday, October 2nd 1998, 12:00AM

Tower Managed Funds (TMF) is the new name for the merged Tower Trust Services (TTS) and Trustees Executors (TEA) group, managing director Jim Minto says.
The merger has led to a rationalisation of funds from 33 to 20. The funds which are being closed to new investment are those which had not grown significantly in recent years.
Minto says Tower will be able to extract efficiencies from its funds management operation by merging TTS and TEA.
TMF has more than $800 million under management and has declared its intention to lead the industry in lowering costs and generating efficiencies.

"There are far too many small retail funds in the market, all of them bearing the same fixed costs (such as investment statements, prospectuses, audit fees, legal fees and administration of unit holder registers) as larger funds," Minto says.
"That's a lot of duplication, and realistically, any fund of less than $10 million isn't going to be delivering an acceptable return to investors."
Minto says there will be no fee increases or changes to unit pricing as a result of the merger. Also, all TTS's 22 and TEA's eight staff have kept their jobs.
IPAC Securities describes the merger as "a positive change".
The new range of funds is:

The NZ Range	The Spotlight International Range	TORTIS Range	Tasman Range
NZ Equity Trust	Spotlight Europe Fund	TORTIS - International	Tasman Balanced Growth
Multi-Sector Fund	Spotlight Emerging Europe	TORTIS - New Zealand	Tasman Conservative Growth
FirstRate Account	Spotlight Asia Fund	TORTIS - OZZY	Tasman Income
MortgagePlus Fund	Spotlight Latin America		Tasman Long Term Growth
BondPlus Fund	Global Fund
CorporatePlus Income Fund	GAM Global Gateway Fund
SuperPlus Income Fund	GAM Multi-Emerging Markets Fund
PropertyPlus Fund	GAM Multi-Trading Fund