Artisan Partners a Morningstar Fund Manager of the Year finalist

Copia Investment Partners is pleased to announce that Artisan Global Discovery has been recognised as a finalist by Morningstar at its 2021 Fund Manager of the Year Awards (Undiscovered Manager category).

The award for Undiscovered Manager includes managers or specific funds with strong investment merit that Morningstar considers worthy of bringing to the attention of the retail market.

Artisan Partners is a US-based global fund manager with $161 billion under management as at February 2021. Until recently, the fund manager was only available in Australia to institutional investors. That changed in June 2020 through a partnership with Australian fund distributor Copia.

A locally-domiciled unit trust version of the Artisan Global Discovery Fund (a global small and mid cap strategy - SMID) is now available, fully equipped with researcher ratings, platform inclusions and a much lower minimum investment of $5,000 for direct investors.

Global Discovery interest growing, meeting specific needs

Despite increased competition in the asset class - with at least 12 new SMID strategies launched in the past three years - the Fund has continued to gain traction among researchers, platforms, advice groups and investors. In March 2021, the Fund reached $70 million under management, with a substantial pipeline for new investment.

Copia is experiencing increasing interest for Artisan Partners for four main reasons:

1. More investors are recognising the need to invest in innovative companies and many with more attractive valuations are outside of Australia. The Artisan Global Discovery Fund may provide a viable option for portfolio diversification particularly where portfolios have historically been underrepresented to global mid and small caps.

2. The Artisan Partners 24-person Growth Team managing the Fund is significantly larger than many peers. Depth of resources may make a meaningful difference in stock selection and performance outcomes particularly in the SMID asset class where public information is less widely available (compared to large caps), and more feet ‘on-the-ground’ may allow greater coverage when it comes to in-house fundamental research.

3. While the Global Discovery Fund has over three years of performance track record, the underlying investment approach has a 25-year history by members of the same team, at the same firm. Very few SMID fund managers in Australia can match this tenure.

4. Track record is often cited as proof of an investment process, and pleasingly, the performance results support the Artisan Partners Growth Team investment thesis. The chart on page one compares performance and risk over three years to January 2021 (longest annual period available for the Fund), relative to the Fund’s peer group.

The Fund has achieved the following milestones in terms of researcher ratings, award recognition and platform placement: