The group raised about $6.9 billion globally in terms of net flows, according to IFM chief executive David Himbury, with a further $5 billion in growth from asset appreciation, resulting in a jump from $34 billion to $46 billion in FUM in the 2012/2013 financial year.
Mr Himbury told InvestorDaily the inflows are “increasingly a mix” of investments from domestic and overseas investors, but added there had been a series of further institutional mandates from overseas in the first three weeks of the new financial year into infrastructure debt.
Although those deals are the subject of confidentiality agreements, they came from “overseas-based long-term institutional investors”, he said.
The increased interest from overseas is in part due to investors searching for yield on a risk-adjusted basis, “and infrastructure debt is seemingly increasingly of interest”, he said.
IFM still sees great support from Australian institutional clients - largely industry funds - but increasingly from other clients such as large institutional clients in Australia and venture funds out of the United States, Canada, Europe and the UK, Mr Himbury said.
That was from a base of “very little” offshore fundraising in 2011 to almost $2 billion in the North American and European markets in 2012/2013, according to IFM.
The group also saw inflows to its debt investments capability of $3.2 billion for the year.
“Debt investments continue to outperform across all time periods. IFM’s Alternative Fixed Income Fund significantly outperformed its benchmark by 6.3 per cent in 2012/2013,” the group stated.
With markets globally having a strong year and IFM outperforming across most assets, the group has added alpha as well as beta, according to Mr Himbury.
“Infrastructure has a 10 per cent return objective. Last year, [our infrastructure investments returned] 12 per cent,” he said.
“So we got the beta but we’ve also added a fair amount of alpha. That’s the longest product we manage but that’s not an inconsistent story across a vast majority across the four asset classes.” The other three asset classes managed by IFM are listed equities, debt investments and private equity.
“Good returns means we’re getting increased support globally, which means we’ve got scale benefits we’re keen to pass back to investors; it’s a good, virtuous circle,” Mr Himbury said.
