Past Managers
Altrinsic Global Advisors, LLC (Altrinsic) is a highly focussed investment boutique specialising in company research and the identification of investment opportunities among listed global equities.
Global equities are a key asset class for institutional investors in Australasia.
After an extensive search process Ambassador partnered with Altrinsic in September 2005. Over the course of the next 6 years, Ambassador helped Altrinsic raise over A$3.5 billion from the Australian and New Zealand markets.
In 2001 Altrinsic announced a strategic relationship with nabInvest and its intention to establish a local office with its own people. As a result, Ambassador and Altrinsic's relationship came to a logical and anticipated end in July 2011.
We believe our role in Altrinsic's success, and the eventual establishment of its own office in this region, is a strong endorsement of the Ambassador business model. Our model encourages and fosters the transition from an outsourced marketing model to one where the fund manager takes full control.
Over the course of 2011, Ambassador continued to work closely with Altrinsic in servicing the local client base up to the point where Altrinsic made its own local appointment.
In 2004/05 Ambassador identified that a growing number of superannuation fund members wanted exposure to investment sectors/products that provided:
- inflation protection,
- high yield, and
- some capital preservation requirements.
One investment opportunity that contained characteristics to meet those needs was bank loans.
We conducted an extensive search of bank loan managers and uncovered Texas based, Highland Capital Management, a firm with strong resources, many years of experience and a high pedigree in the bank loans sector.
In 2005 Highland Capital Management became Ambassador's first fund manager client.
At that time the bank loans sector was not well known or understood. It was also under utilised as an asset class in the Australian market. Ambassador helped the team at Highland develop a series of educational documents and presentations specifically for our market. These presentations were also then adopted and adapted by Highland for use by their US sales teams.
After an initial 2 year period implementing a disciplined sales process and Highland's senior investment professionals visiting regularly, the firm acquired its first Australian client.
Mandates for this firm exceeded A$200 million, with a strong pipeline of opportunities, when the events of 2008 severely retarded credit based strategies.
A mutually agreeable decision was made between Highland and Ambassador in 2009 to transfer responsibility for their client service and marketing to their Asian based office.
