Orbis considers new opportunities fund

Launch could be next year

By Wouter Klijn
Wed 03 Mar 2010

Fund manager Orbis says it has room for one more fund.

Orbis Investment Management (Australia) is considering the launch of a new opportunities fund, possibly as soon as next year.

It would be the second Australian fund for the Bermuda-headquartered fund manager, in addition to the Orbis/SM Australian equity fund.

"This fund will only invest when it sees an opportunity, so it will be completely out of the stock market for probably long periods of time," Orbis managing director Simon Marais said.

"It would be much lower risk than the Australian equity fund," he said.

"Sometimes the stock market is going to do 30 per cent and the fund will do five, but it is never going to do minus 30.

"It's benchmark would really be cash, because a lot of years it is just going to do cash."

Orbis-affiliated investment firm Allan Grey, named after Orbis' founder, has been running a similar strategy in South Africa for nine years, called the Allan Gray Stable fund.

"When we launched in South Africa, there were no such funds available and no distribution capability," Marais said.

"Today, it is the biggest fund in the entire South African market."

Marais said two funds would be the firm's maximum in Australia.

"We are not like others, who have 30 or 35 funds that are all marginally different. These are the two that we can have," he said.

The date of the launch will depend on the performance of the current fund, Marais said.

"The reason why we haven't launched is because we want a really solid, long-term track record with the other fund before we launch a second one."

"So if we have a really good year this year, we will look at launching a second fund."

The fund would be for investors with at least a five-year investment horizon.

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