News Round Up

Monday, May 3rd 2004, 7:46AM

Legendary investor Warren Buffett has labelled hedge funds a "fad" that are more about Wall Street marketing than sound investing.

Buffett made the comments during the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway over the weekend in the US.

"People that are now investing in hedge funds in aggregate are going to be disappointed," Buffett said. The fees that hedge fund managers charge were unfair, he said.

Australian mortgage fund for Money Managers
Money Managers has signed an exclusive deal to promote the the LM Mortgage Income Fund.

“LM's Mortgage Income Fund has been Australia's best performing income fund over the past four years, according to the latest data from fund researcher Morningstar,” Money Managers market director Alasdair Scott says.

“The fund outperformed the Morningstar mortgage sector index with a 7.77% return over the 12 months to November 2003.”

The fund invests in first mortgages spread over commercial, residential, industrial, retail and vacant land, and is spread in line with the population across Australia's states.

Scott says the fund has never had a capital loss.

Another top manager
AMP Capital Investors has won the 2004 INFINZ Fund Manager of the Year Award, while First NZ Capital Securities was named sharebroker of the year.

Tower expands Leaders service

Tower has rolled out the latest development in its Leaders wrap service which is an external asset register.

This register allows advisers to report on their clients’ full financial position by including assets held outside of the Leaders menus.

Phase two adds ability to graphically represent these assets – either as a pie chart of the external assets or as a consolidated pie chart showing both Leaders and non-Leaders investments.

The release also enables easier searching and sorting adding a search by asset feature to the existing sort by client area.

EASYgrow extended
Liontamer has extended the closing date for its EASYgrow 100 capital protected fund to May 11.

EASYgrow 100 is a five and a half year fund, which is capital protected and allows investors to participate in 100% of the MSCI index gains over the period.

Liontamer says the terms on this fund can't be repeated at the moment because of the way the market has moved.

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