Surprises abound in this year's awards

This year's FundSource Fund Manager of the Year Awards is full of surprises.

Tuesday, October 19th 2004, 2:51AM

AXA joins last year’s winner and runner up, BNZ and Tower, as nominees in the 2004 FundSource Fund Manager of Year Awards.

FundSource yesterday announced the nominees for its awards which are bound to raise a few eyebrows.

Deadset winners are Tower and Public Trust in the international equities and diversified growth sectors respectively as they are the only nominees

Everyone’s a loser in international fixed interest – there are no nominees.

Potential surprises are the three nominees in the New Zealand mortgages sector as they are relatively unknown and small regional entities – First Mortgage Managers, Fund Managers Canterbury and Fund Managers Otago.

Adding to the surprise factor here is that none of the banks feature in this sector, yet their funds pull in huge amounts of money.

Another potential surprise is the absence of Fisher Funds from the New Zealand shares sector as it has been a very successful manager in its niche.

An analysis of the nominees also reveals the absence of many of the large fund managers. For instance BT Funds doesn’t feature at all, nor does ASB Group Investments, AMP has one fund, – although two of the funds it manages for the National Bank are nominees - and BNZ although nominees for overall Fund Manager of the Year don’t have any sector nominations.

Just to cap it off the two managers with the most nominations (four each) are Tower and the Public Trust. Clearly they do a good job but the latter is not a name which springs to mind as a contender for “Fund Manager of the Year”.

Fund Manager of the Year nominees

AXA New Zealand Ltd

BNZ Investment Management

TOWER Managed Funds

Fund Sector Nominees

NZ Cash

ING (NZ) Ltd	ANZ Flexi Cash (33%)
Perpetual Trust	Perpetual Trust Cash Fund
Guardian Trust Financial Services	Guardian CashPlus Fund (33%)

NZ Mortgages

First Mortgage Managers	First Mortgage Trust (33%)
Fund Managers Canterbury	NZ Mortgage Income Trust (33%)
Fund Managers Otago	Canterbury Mortgage Trust (33%)

NZ Property

AMP Financial Services	AMP NZ Property Trust
ING (NZ) Ltd	ING Property Securities Fund
TOWER Managed Funds	Tower PropertyPlus Fund

NZ Equity

AXA New Zealand	AXA Australasian Selected Equities Trust
ING (NZ) Ltd ING	New Zealand Share Fund
National Bank Managed Funds	Thoroughbred NZ Equity Growth Trust

International Equity

TOWER Managed Funds

Tower GAM Global Gateway Fund

NZ Fixed interest

Asteron Life Ltd	Asteron Corporate Bond Trust
Asteron Life Ltd	Asteron NZ Fixed Interest Fund
National Bank Managed Funds	Thoroughbred Corporate Bond Trust

International Fixed Interest

NO NOMINEES

Diversified Balanced