The appointment of SLI as sub-adviser follows the company’s decision to choose SLI as manager of its Global Absolute Return Strategies (GARS) Fund back in January 2012.
John Hancock said this has been one of the fastest-growing funds for the firm, which is unsurprising given the popularity of SLI’s own GARS product, which has reached £17.9bn in AUM.
Last week the multi-asset investing team at SLI suffered a blow with the departure of Euan Munro, who was one of the founders of GARS to Aviva Investors. Guy Stern was promoted to head up the 32-strong team and take lead management on GARS.
While it will not be Stern who manages the John Hancock Global Conservative Absolute Return Fund, it is the same team who will be working on the strategy, so this is a significant vote of confidence for SLI.
Ian Pizer and Roger Sadewsky will be lead managers on the fund and have been running the GCAR strategy for SLI since inception in March 2011.
Risk/return
The conservative strategy’s main difference compared with GARS is that it has no equity or equity-like exposure, which means it has a different risk/return spectrum and looks to deliver a return commensurate with a lowered risk profile.
GCAR has a 12 to 18 month outlook for each of its strategy and so has the ability to be slightly more tactical, compared with GARS’ three-year outlook. It also has the ability to take a negative duration in fixed income.
John Hancock said GCAR could also suit investors looking for a substitute for fixed income because of concerns they have about rising interest rates and their correlation with broad fixed income markets.
Key men
Pizer is responsible for the generation of interest rate strategies for inclusion across SLI’s fixed-interest portfolios and for consideration by multi-asset portfolios, while Sadewsky provides research input into the macro fixed income environment and has a specialist background in credit and credit derivatives.
Keith Skeoch, CEO of SLI, said: “The GCAR fund builds on our many years of experience of working in the multi-asset investing space. We believe that it will appeal to many investors looking to generate absolute returns with lower levels of volatility.
“The launch of the fund is further evidence of the growing relationship between Standard Life Investments and John Hancock, a relationship that allows us to deliver investment potential to the largest asset management market in the world.”
