Leading brokerage and investment house Forsyth Barr is setting up separate funds management operation Octagon Asset Management.
Photo: 123RF
Octagon starts with about $650 million of assets under management, including the Summer KiwiSaver fund, and a handful of specialist investment funds covering equities and fixed interest.
Chief investment manager Paul Robertshawe said Octagon had been hived off to pursue further business and to expand across the investment sector.
Octagon Asset Management chief investment officer Paul Robertshawe. Photo: Supplied
"We thought that the skill base and the product offering we had there were good enough and developed enough to take to the broader institutional and retail market and the best way to do that is to remove some of the conflicts or all the conflicts we can and go into an independent entity.
"That will give us the freedom to pursue wholesale institutional market and a broader retail push beyond what the Forsyth Barr adviser network can reach."
Octagon will be the manager of Forsyth Barr's investment products and will contract back to its parent for backroom operations. It will be based in Auckland, Wellington, and Dunedin, the original home of Forsyth Barr.
Robertshawe said the initial focus would be on getting itself known in the wholesale investment market, offering an active management approach.
"We think we can invest in value, we are not value managers in the traditional sense, but we classify ourselves as not overpaying for future growth ... but you can identify opportunities across the market that are not pigeonholed."
He said the data showed that active management would produce better investment returns and justify the higher fees charged.
Robertshawe said in time Octagon would look to develop ESG (environmental, social, and governance) based investment products, and its current list of excluded investment types closely matched that of the NZ Super Fund.