Perpetual’s activist strategy could use Joe Aston as investment manager struggles to hit $1bn target

How the mighty has fallen. Once-great fund manager Perpetual is tapping journalist Joe Aston to promote the cause of activist investing.

Joe Aston leaving Federal Court in 2021. Picture: Jane Dempster/The Australian

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Funds managers are reliably obsessed with Joe Aston, the former Financal Review Rear Window columnist turned Rampart publisher.

So rumours put to this scribe that the author of the Chairman’s Lounge could be contemplating a jump into funds management at the once-great Perpetual (spoiler: he is not) appear to be a case of wishful thinking.

Its storied reputation as an investor that spoke out publicly on shareholder matters has all but disappeared, hence the difficulties the company has faced trying to raise money for a new activist fund.

Perpetual is promoting its much-delayed and likely highly undersubscribed $1bn new activist shareholder fund with Aston’s Rampart.

Perpetual would like to think its activist bent has a lot in common with Aston.

And, it wouldn’t be the first time a former journalist has plied their trade in funds management, at Perpetual no less.

Joe Aston (left) and Perpetual CEO Bernard Reilly. Pictures: Nikki Short; Supplied

John Sevior was a finance journalist at The Age before joining Perpetual, where he worked for 17 years, including a decade as the chief stockpicker. Matthew Kidman worked at The Sydney Morning Herald before joining Geoff Wilson and then setting up his own Centennial Asset Management, as did Alex Pollak, who was an analyst at Macquarie Bank before starting his global equities fund Loftus Peak.

Perpetual could certainly do with some good news.

The fund manager has been heavily beset with outflows – part of an industry trend against active managers – and its plan to offset dwindling funds by buying rival firms has not paid off.

Instead, the activism has been against Perpetual itself, which last year, under a weight of investor dissatisfaction, agreed to sell its best assets to private equity giant KKR in a deal that would have resulted in the company being divided up and its name handed over to the US firm.

But that deal failed because it hadn’t correctly considered the significant tax implications.

Stuck in a seeming no-man’s land, Perpetual this week announced a new suitor of sorts in Partners Group to look at listed investment trusts, co-investments and innovative fund structures.

It makes sense theoretically given Perpetual’s lack of private market capabilities, although it could also been seen as a backdoor entry to the private equity firm to tap the Australian giant’s investor base.

In the meantime, Perpetual is the cornerstone advertiser on Rampart’s newsletters and Aston its guest speaker at special events it is holding to help raise money for its Strategic Capital Fund.

The Australian first wrote about Perpetual trying to launch the Strategic Capital Fund in August 2023, designed as its first new strategy in a decade. Except Perpetual had always been known as an activist investor.

Active managers such as Perpetual are struggling to attract new dollars and retain existing investors because of a growing trend towards lower-cost and often better-performing index funds. This trend is being accelerated by the cost-of-living crisis and higher interest rates.

Perpetual reported net outflows of funds under management of $3.4bn in the first half.

The fund manager declined to say how much money the Strategic Capital Fund has raised, via a spokesman. The Strategic Capital Fund had underperformed the benchmark on a one-year basis (the longest annual measure) by 4.05 per cent and underperformed since inception by 5.78 per cent, as at April 30.

The performance over the past two years of the Perpetual Australian and Concentrated equity funds has been below benchmark in what’s been a difficult market for value-style managers.

There have also been changes to personnel; Clarke Wilkins, senior equities analyst under Vince Pezzullo, left the business early in 2025, and talk is that long-time analyst Maryanne Drewe is poised to leave the business as well.

So will Joe go? Aston ruled out such a move, and in truth, the timing seems off.

“I’ve always been close to the Perpetual team,” Aston says. “We have a similar approach to the world, in holding underperforming businesses to account.”

Originally published as Perpetual’s activist strategy could use Joe Aston as investment manager struggles to hit $1bn target