Fidante Partners, the boutique funds management arm of listed investment manager Challenger Limited, will continue its plans for growth through new boutique acquisitions opportunities.
“A key part of our strategy going forward is to further develop the boutiques business,” Fidante Partners general manager Cathy Hales told InvestorDaily.
“We have ambitions to add a couple more boutiques to the platform but we are making sure they are the right fit,” she said.
“We currently have 11 boutique managers and we’re very happy with how each of those businesses are positioned as they’re continuing to attract inflows across a range of clients across the market, at a time where the industry itself is finding that very challenging.”
While Fidante Partners was actively working on its strategy to add compelling boutique partners, it had no set deadlines for new acquisitions, Hales said.
“We get a pretty steady flow of enquiry for new boutique propositions so we’re not worried about the number of opportunities available, we’re just particular about identifying the right one.
“Ideally, we’d like to partner with a business that has some track record and is attracted to the institutional governance and services that we can provide because we can add considerable value in that regard. We’re still open to the idea of start-up businesses.”
Managers in the international equities space and potentially alternative asset classes would complement the current managers in the business, Hales said.
“We already have a couple of international equity managers, so the reason why that category continues to be appealing to us is because we think that, with the growth of superannuation generally, cash flows into that segment will continue to grow in dollar and percentage terms.
“There’s capacity for quality investors in that space.”
