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Specialist in Asia Pacific, Japan, China, India and South East Asia and Global Emerging Market equities.

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formerly Realindex Investments

Leader in active quantitative equities across Australian equities, global equities, emerging markets and global small companies.

Backed by a unique blend of research, portfolio construction and risk management, focused on uncovering original insights and translating them into investment strategies that are active and systematic, aiming to generate alpha.

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At Stewart Investors, we believe in putting people first. Our investment world-view is of a series of partnerships – with each other, with our clients, with the companies we invest in, the people who buy their goods and services, and with the wider society in which we all live and work.

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Australian Fixed Income

Australian Fixed Income team

Stephen Cooper
Head of Australian Fixed Income

Stephen leads the Australian Fixed Income Team, based in Sydney, in managing our portfolio of Australian Fixed Income clients. The team is responsible for contributing to the global platform with explicit responsibility for alpha sources through a balanced risk approach to portfolio construction. Stephen and his team also have responsibility for Australian Core, Inflation-Linked, and Passive/ALM Fixed Income portfolios. Stephen has been leading the team in this capacity since June 2016. Stephen joined the company in February 2013 as a Senior Portfolio Manager. Prior to joining the company, Stephen was Director, Investment Solutions at ING Investment Management for nearly 10 years; responsible for the management of indexed, quantitative and traditional active portfolios across fixed interest and structured credit. Prior to ING Investment Management, Stephen was employed at the Reserve Bank of Australia, Credit Suisse, ANZ Investments and Commonwealth Treasury where he was an Economist/Strategist.Stephen graduated with a Bachelor of Economics (First Class Honours) from the University of Tasmania and has also completed a Graduate Diploma in Financial Markets. Stephen is supported in his role by 4 experienced portfolio managers with an average of over 15 years of industry experience.

Darja Milosevic
Portfolio Manager

Darja Milosevic is a Portfolio Manager with responsibilities for portfolio construction and management of fixed interest funds. Prior to joining the company in January 2007, Darja spent seven years at the Reserve Bank of Australia (Financial Markets Group). Darja holds a Bachelor of Mathematics and Finance (Hons) from the University of Technology, Sydney and also a Masters of Applied Finance from Macquarie University, Sydney.

John Barrasso
Portfolio Manager

John joined the company in August 2015 as a Senior Portfolio Dealer working in the Fixed Income and Credit team. In John’s current role as a Portfolio Manager, he continues to utilise his diverse fixed income experience for the company. Prior to this, John has spent the last 18 years working in top tier global financial companies in London, New York and now Sydney.  With initial experience in fixed income treasury roles at RBS and SwissRe, his focus for the past 10 years has been in fixed income derivatives. First as a portfolio manager for Lloyds Plc and more recently as an Executive Director for Nomura he has built extensive experience in all forms of global fixed income. John holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from the University of Connecticut (USA).

Alex Nikolovski
Portfolio Manager

Alex joined the Australian Fixed Income Team as a Portfolio Analyst in January 2019. In his current role of Portfolio Manager, he is primarily responsible for supporting the Fixed Income and Currency Dealing Team’s daily portfolio modelling and trading processes. He is also involved in daily, weekly and monthly portfolio reporting processes and produces materials for portfolio construction and fair value meetings. Prior to joining the company, Alex was an Investment Analyst at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia for nearly 4 years, responsible for supporting senior members of the team in the ongoing portfolio management of multi-asset portfolios. Alex holds a Bachelor of Applied Finance from Macquarie University and is a CFA Charterholder. 

Adrian Janscheck
Portfolio Manager

Adrian is a Portfolio Manager in First Sentier's Australian Fixed Income team. He has been with the company since February 2015, initially as a portfolio dealer, and now utilising his markets experience to contribute to portfolio outcomes. Prior to joining First Sentier, he spent 20 years in investment banking sales and trading roles at firms such as Westpac, Credit Suisse, Citibank and JP Morgan. He has extensive experience in relative value aspects of Government bond markets, asset-backed and credit products, inflation-linked securities, and derivatives. 

Adrian holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Economics from the University of Wollongong and is AFMA Accredited. He is also currently on the AFMA Debt Market and Inflation Committees.

Rob Jewell
Portfolio Manager

Rob Jewell joined the Australian Fixed Income team in October 2023 as a Portfolio Manager. Previously Rob worked as a Director at Citigroup Australia managing the Balance Sheet assets in the Markets Treasury Division. Prior to that he was Head of Funds Trading at ANZ and Head of GFI Macro and Credit at QIC. He has extensive experience managing global fixed interest and currency portfolios.

Rob is a CFA Charter holder. He holds a Bachelor of Economics from University of QLD and a Diploma of Applied Finance and Investment from SIA.

Zhao Kuang
Quantitative Analyst

Zhao joined the Australian Fixed Income Team at First Sentier Investors in November 2023 as a Quantitative Analyst. He is responsible for the implementation and maintenance of market analysis and relative value models utilized by the Australian Fixed Income team in investment decisions.

Prior to joining First Sentier Investors, Zhao spent seven years at Blackrock in New York as a Portfolio Manager in the Financial Institutions Group. He was responsible for daily portfolio management of all fixed income funds as well as implementation scalable solutions in portfolio construction. 

Zhao has also spent six years within Blackrock Solution in New York and Tokyo working in the Portfolio Analytics Group where he provided risk reporting and analysis for fixed income portfolio managers.

Zhao holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from University of Pennsylvania and is a CFA Charter holder.