Staffing changes trigger Zenith downgrade of two Cooper Investors’ share funds
Ratings house Zenith has downgraded two of Cooper Investors’ global share funds, citing the second restructure of management personnel over the past three years.
Ratings house Zenith has downgraded two Cooper Investors’ global share funds, citing the second restructure of the firm’s portfolio management personnel over the past three years.
The changes saw Zenith downgrade the funds to an “approved” rating, after a period of review, an update obtained by The Weekend Australian showed. Prior to the review the two funds were rated “recommended”.
The downgrades relate to the Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund (Hedged) and the Cooper Investors Global Equities Fund (Unhedged). The firm’s founder and overall chief investment officer is Peter Cooper, whose wealth was this year estimated at $631m by The Australian’s The List.
Mr Cooper founded Cooper Investors in 2001 and the firm manages about $11bn across funds and investment trusts.
Zenith’s assessment of the two Cooper Investors global funds highlighted personnel changes that occurred in August. Marcus Guzzardi and Geoff Di Felice were appointed the co-portfolio managers of those funds, replacing Christopher Dixon.
“This change represents the second portfolio management restructure over the past three years. Prior to July 2022, Dixon co-managed the fund alongside Allan Goldstein,” Zenith’s note said. “Dixon and Goldstein remain with the investment team and continue to manage other CI (Cooper Investors) global equity strategies.”
Zenith’s assessment also said the firm had met with Mr Cooper, Mr Di Felice and Mr Guzzardi to discuss the management changes in detail.
Asked about the changes on Friday, Mr Cooper said in a statement: “We have recently reallocated responsibilities on our global equities platform, this reallocation reflects the strengths of three of our most experienced PMs (portfolio managers).”
Zenith’s assessment labelled Mr Guzzardi and Mr Di Felice as capable regarding the management of the firm’s global smaller companies strategy, but noted it would need to monitor their management of the funds in question.
“We will seek to build confidence in their portfolio management competencies within a broad global equities mandate,” it said.
“Providing us with a level of comfort is the continued oversight of Peter Cooper and the consistency of Cooper Investors’ long-standing investment process, which we believe to be intuitively appealing.”
The performance of the Cooper Investors global funds – relative to benchmarks they are measured against – has, however, proven mixed over different time frames.
The hedged Global Equities Fund for retail investors has underperformed the MSCI AC World Index Net Dividends benchmark by 0.69 per cent over 10 years, and trailed by 6.7 per cent over three years. Over the three months ended September 30, it beat the benchmark by 1.74 per cent.
The wholesale hedged Global Equities Fund outperformed the same benchmark by 0.83 per cent over 10 years, but underperformed by 5.5 per cent over three years. Over three months, the fund is 2.1 per cent ahead.
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