Lonsec has given the Macquarie International Infrastructure Securities Fund its highest rating in a review of infrastructure securities funds.
In its annual review of the sector, Lonsec looked at six global funds, one Australian fund and one hybrid. Among the eight, it rated the Macquarie ‘highly recommended’.
“Lonsec has focused on reviewing a select list of higher quality offerings in this review, rather than researching all the products in this space,” Lonsec investment analyst Andrew Coutts said.
He said the investment process and the decentralisation of the portfolio management team were key in the rating.
“Macquarie has a very logical investment process,” Coutts said.
“All of the best ideas make their way into the portfolio.”
The fund’s fees also featured in the rating.
“The fees are generally pretty consistent across the infrastructure funds but Macquarie has made some improvements to the fee set-up of this fund,” Coutts said.
“They’ve scrapped the performance fee and the MER [manager expense ratio] has fallen to 1.06 per cent,” he said, adding MER had previously been 1.12 per cent.
The Macquarie international infrastructure fund removed its performance fee at the end of February 2011.
Coutts said size, quality and stability of the fund’s management team were positive factors in the rating. Macquarie’s global resources also contributed, given that part of the team is based in New York and the portfolio management team have access to Macquarie Group analysts and other resources worldwide.
The stability of the Macquarie team was especially evident over the past year as fierce competition in the small, highly specialised sector sparked higher than usual turnover.
