Former Milford Asset Management corporate bond manager, Travis Murdoch, has popped up at Pie Funds in the newly created head of fixed income role.
Murdoch departed Milford in September after a two-year stint at the country’s largest boutique manager. Prior to Milford he spent about 15 years in the UK in various investment roles with firms including Legal & General Investment Management and J P Morgan – mostly managing credit funds.
Pie chief, Mike Taylor, said in the group’s latest newsletter that following “the growth in our Conservative Fund and KiwiSaver business, the time was right to bring someone of Travis’s experience into the team”.
Launched as an Australasian small caps specialist in 2007, Pie has diversified over the years to include global markets and fixed income to support the now $460 million Juno KiwiSaver scheme.
According to the latest fund update, the Pie conservative strategy held almost $190 million as at the end of September: as well as several on-call bank accounts and term deposits, the fund also invests in a number of BlackRock iShares exchange-traded funds and the Harbour NZ Corporate Bond Fund.
The Auckland- and Havelock North-based manager has seen a decent amount of staff turnover during the last couple of years with several significant hires recently including former ANZ head of wealth, Ana-Marie Lockyer, who replaces Taylor as CEO next month.
Post the leadership change, Taylor will remain as chief investment officer and portfolio manager on a few of the group’s nine funds (three are now closed to new investors).
“As alluded to on a number of occasions this year, my goal for the investment team in 2022 has been to build out our capability, depth and skillset,” he said in the newsletter.
The Pie and Juno funds have struggled over the last 12 months or so amid rising interest rates but Taylor said performance bucked up in October.
However, he said while the US Federal Reserve rapid series of rate hikes may prove to be a “giant policy mistake”, a full-on market crash was unlikely.
“Markets usually crash or sell off aggressively when investors have been drinking the Kool Aid and are caught with their pants down. By October this year, everyone is well aware of the challenges for investors and so there can only be a final capitulation or crash if new information comes to light that nobody is expecting,” Taylor said. “I challenge you to tell me what that scenario is.”