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The team boasts one of the largest number of dedicated portfolio managers of cash funds in Australia, with a long term and solid track record of outperformance.
Find out more about our short term investment cash funds today. They aim to provide a regular income from investments in money market securities.
Head of Short Term Investments and Global Credit Tony Togher discusses negative interest rates in Australia, the ongoing role of cash in portfolios and gives insight into how the largest cash manager in Australia continues to add value when rates are low.
Shares, bonds, and alternative asset classes tend to dominate media attention and headlines, but there's a forgotten asset class that underpins most investors’ portfolios: cash. Record low interest rates around the world saw cash fall out of favour with investors in recent years, but prospective returns from cash portfolios are now rising again owing to higher official interest rates in key regions. In this paper, Tony Togher, Head of Fixed Income, Short Term Investments and Global Credit, explains some of the different investments that fall under the category of 'cash', some of the risks to be aware of and, finally, outlines the investment case for cash.
We consider ESG risks to be factors that may place business value at risk. Companies at risk are identified using both external providers and our own internally driven research, which is based on a systematic and extensive company meeting program.
Read regular news updates, research papers, investment strategy updates and thought pieces from our leading investment experts.
We believe financial markets, critical to society’s ability to function, are under threat. For too long, it has been widely accepted that short-term performance, growth, risks and financial returns should be maximised at the expense of environmental and social outcomes.
Learn about investing in fixed income today. First Sentier Investors' on-the-ground teams share investment ideas uncovered in developed and emerging markets.
The well-established First Sentier Investors Australian Small and Mid-Caps team has extended its small companies long short strategy to retail investors for the first time
While the wild swings in share, credit, currency, and commodity markets have garnered most of the attention in the months following the COVID-19 outbreak, cash markets in Australia have seen some highly unusual movements that demand further scrutiny.
2020 has been a remarkable year for infrastructure operators and investors, with Covid-19 abruptly changing the way we work, play and travel. Lockdowns have not been seen on this scale since World War Two, impacting short-term earnings for assets like toll roads and airports.
The First Sentier Wholesale Strategic Cash Fund (‘the Fund’) reported a positive return (0.0032 or 0.32%, gross of fees) for the month of October 2022. This result was a welcome development following the low interest rate environment of the last 2 years, which has seen cash as an asset class struggle to produce higher returns and gain interest. With inflation becoming a key focus globally, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has begun tightening monetary policy through hiking interest rates, which has seen increasingly positive prospective returns from cash portfolios. The Fund maintains ample liquidity and is well positioned to capitalise off of the current market conditions. This note will dive into the dominant factors driving performance as well as further detail of the investment team’s longstanding approach to managing the portfolio which remains unchanged.
Office real estate is undergoing a fundamental shift, while COVID-19 has accelerated a number of global real estate investment trends, including the continued growth and adoption of e-commerce and falling home ownership.
Most investment professionals believe that neither ESG nor long-term factors are efficiently priced by markets. Around 75% believe that investors are over sensitive to short-term factors. A similar number believe that risks and opportunities associated with ESG externalities are not being captured in market value
The Realindex Australian Share Value-Class A Fund is a real achiever that, since its inception in 2008, has delivered long-term outperformance compared to its benchmark for investors.
There was a large jump in capital raisings – in April alone 26 companies in the S&P/ASX300 issued new stock. By the end of 2020, 104 of these companies had undertaken raisings - the most number of companies that had ever raised equity in single year - totalling almost $40 billion.
We are entering a new era. The year 2024 will be unpredictable and clouded by many uncertainties. It will be marked by geopolitical risks, the ongoing taming of the inflation beast, and how the US Presidential election will impact markets.
"What we do well by being global is recognising trends that are happening in one part of the world, and seeing that as an opportunity in another part." Peter Meany, Head of Global Listed Infrastructure, discusses global trends in infrastructure assets with Graham Hand from FirstLinks.
People are are at the heart of our success as a leading global asset manager
First Sentier Investors is the world-leading provider of specialist investment capabilities. Discover how we provide research-led active investment management.
Time flies in the world of investments, and the themes that were emerging last year have gathered speed since then. Late in 2021 we published a Realinsights paper on the long-term relationship between inflation and Value-style investing, focused on whether the inflation spike we had been seeing on the back of the COVID lockdown and stimulus packages would drive outperformance of Value compared to Growth-style investments. Events have moved swiftly since then, including the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict; high realised and anticipated inflation; and a risk of a global recession. In this context, we have revisited the question of how Value stocks are performing.
There are four distinct ways to approach ESG investing in systematic investment strategies. Understanding the pros and cons of each can help to align client preferences. How investment managers and asset owners apply and implement their Environmental, Social and Governance thinking really matters to client outcomes.
This paper outlines the responsible investing approach adopted by various First Sentier Investors investment teams across the globe. It involves a holistic way of thinking that addresses multiple impacts across multiple environmental, social and governance (ESG) measures. We believe it can lead to better long‑term financial and sustainability outcomes, across more measures, than more traditional frameworks.
It’s hard not to react to what the markets are doing. It can be tempting to sell out of certain asset classes or follow the herd to the ‘next best thing’ but fortune favours the patient investor.
Despite the extraordinary events since its launch in June 2007 – including the Global Financial Crisis, volatile commodity prices, and political upheaval in many parts of the world – the strategy has delivered strong, consistent returns through a focus on valuation, quality and active management.
With the support of MUFG Bank, Ltd., (MUFG Bank), First Sentier Investors has launched a private debt capability focused initially on loans to the renewable energy sector.
Benefits of the rapid recovery of airport and toll road volumes far outweigh the operational issues they now face as a result. We expect higher load factors to compensate for airline capacity cuts, meaning traffic will continue to edge towards 2019 levels. European toll roads have a positive role to play in the decarbonisation of the transport sector, providing both societal benefits and investment return upside.
The ASX100 is a ripe hunting ground for investors looking to gain access to Australia’s largest and most influential companies across a diverse range of sectors.
At First Sentier Investors, the Global Property Securities team is taking a proactive approach to decarbonising our portfolio of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) by setting a net zero emissions target. The REIT sector’s total assets are valued at over US$2 trillion , and as some of the largest landlords in the world, they have clear duty of care to help fight climate change. We have undertaken extensive analysis of our REIT portfolio using sophisticated models, developed in-house, and we are allocating our capital to landlords who are committed to emissions reduction. In this way, we believe real estate investors can play an important part in addressing climate change.
The outlook for the global economy and financial markets looks more uncertain today than it has for a long time. Both interest rates and inflation have risen sharply. There is a growing consensus that much of the world will shortly be experiencing slowing economic growth.
Global listed infrastructure companies outperformed both global equities and bonds in 2022. We believe the financial and economic factors contributing to this outperformance may remain in play in 2023.
The energy crisis in Europe has boosted global demand for LNG. Global listed infrastructure companies pioneered the US LNG industry, investing US$50 billion since 2010. The energy crisis is providing an opportunity for LNG to secure its role as a transition fuel. With reliability and security of supply increasingly front of mind, US LNG exporters stand to gain market share, underpinning a further US$50 billion of investment over the next decade. An increased need for natural gas infrastructure will also benefit the broader North American midstream sector.
A company’s reputation and its ‘social license to operate’ (SLO) are two critical intangible assets. Our fifth Climate Change Whitepaper discusses how the increased sophistication of environmental NGOs, public concern and the reach of social media can result in potential challenges for some businesses. It analyses the various costs of reputational risk including the impacts on share price and provides investors with strategies to manage these risks.
Incorporated in 1885, BHP began as a silver, lead and zinc mine in Broken Hill, Australia. Over the next century the company grew into one of the largest diversified resource companies in the world with operations including oil and gas, steel production and mining of a variety of commodities including copper, potash, coal and diamonds. It listed on the Australian stock exchange in July 1961, making it the oldest company currently trading, and throughout much of this time it has been the largest company on the ASX by market capitalisation (currently it is ranked third). In 2001 BHP announced it would merge with fellow resource powerhouse Billiton. Billiton also had a long history dating back to a single tin mine in 1851 before growing into a major producer of aluminium, alumina, chrome, manganese, steaming coal, nickel and titanium. The company was Dutch controlled from inception before being acquired by South African firm Gencor in 1994. As the world’s largest metals and mining corporation, BHP Billiton began trading in July 2002 and operates as a dual listed company (DLC) – a corporate structure in which two companies have merged into a single operating business but retain separate legal identities and stock exchange listings (in this case Australia and the United Kingdom ).
2024 was a good year for global listed infrastructure. Strong earnings for energy midstream and a step-change in the earnings growth outlook for utilities helped the asset class to shrug off rising bond yields and political uncertainty.
In September 2023, I met more than 30 global listed infrastructure companies and stakeholders from the UK, Europe and China. The following travel diary summarises my impressions and findings from these meetings.
We pose the question – what if we could develop a way of predicting which companies are more likely to be suffering distress, and which were not? The idea contains three parts: A. Certain individual observations or metrics can separately tell us about stocks that might – in the near future – find themselves in trouble. B. If we combine enough of these metrics together – without overfitting – we can get synergy between the factors. C. If we build a smart model that is designed specifically to target corporate distress, then we can apply and refine the predictions from the metrics in a better way.
Over the last decade the electricity sector has been at the forefront of decarbonisation, ahead of transport, industry and agriculture.
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