The Henderson Global Equity Fund is the group’s first foray into the Australian market since it parted ways with AMP in 2003 and set up shop in London.
The fund will be managed by Henderson’s head of global equities, Matthew Beesley, who joined the firm in April 2012 from boutique UK firm Trinity Street Asset Management.
Speaking to InvestorDaily, Mr Beesley laid out his investment philosophy, which focuses on companies undergoing a period of internal change.
“We as a team believe that markets are semi-efficient. We think investors do quite a good job most of the time – at least when businesses are operating in a steady state,” he said.
Within his portfolio, Mr Beesley invests in around 30 to 40 companies, aiming to make at least 50 per cent on each stock within two to three years.
“We are a team of global generalist investors, but we get very analytical in our research pursuit of misvalued stocks,” he said.
“The focus on change that we have is something that we believe is quite different than other investors in the marketplace.”
Henderson looks to identity changes that are occurring within a company by examining its ‘ecosystem’.
“We try to find companies where there is change occurring that the company is in control of, and where we can verify and validate that change via the ecosystem,” said Mr Beesley.
“We do extensive and propriety modelling on companies’ profitability, balance sheet and cash flow statements, trying to evaluate the degree of mispricing. The criteria for us is at least 50 per cent misvalued over that two- to three-year period,” he said.
