As signaled last month, AMP Capital Australia has reformed its domestic shares team with seven members, including current head of fundamental equities, Michael Price, to leave the business.
The Sydney-based manager lured Genevieve Murray from rival Macquarie Group to head the revamped Australian equities team.
Murray, previously Macquarie Capital head of research, is also co-portfolio manager of AMP Capital’s systematic team – one of the three teams established under the new structure.
As well as the quant-based systematic group, the manager will run Australian equities income and small cap teams. Incumbents Tom Young and Dermont Ryan will serve as co-portfolio managers of the equity income team with Phillip Hudak and a yet-to-be-appointed co-portfolio manager to look after small caps.
The group is also looking to fill a number of other portfolio manager and analyst roles.
The already-implemented changes have seen AMP Capital exit ‘benchmark aware’ core Australian equities in favour of the new triple-team approach.
In a statement, AMP Capital global chief investment officer equities, David Allen, said the firm was “committed to active management”.
“Our research has shown clients increasingly are looking for solutions that can be highly differentiated and cost effective,” Allen said. “We expect this trend to continue. We believe demand for benchmark-aware, core Australian equities products is in structural decline over the long term.”
AMP Capital looks after about $30 billion of Australian equities with $12 billion of that managed in-house. It is understood about $200 million of NZ-sourced money is invested in AMP Capital’s main Australian equity strategy.
According to the AMP Capital Australia statement, the domestic equities income and small cap approaches have not been affected by the changes.
“The investment process of internally-managed, ESG screened funds has been strengthened,” the statement says. “These low-turnover portfolios are expected to add alpha across the investment cycle by excluding stocks with poor ESG credentials while increasing holdings in those stocks with strong ESG credentials.”
Over the last couple of years AMP Capital has overhauled its investment teams both in Australia and NZ including the establishment of a new London-based global equities team and merging the property and infrastructure units under the global listed real assets banner.
Late in 2014 AMP Capital NZ disestablished its local equities team, outsourcing the almost $700 million portfolio to Salt Asset Management the following year.