Brunel Readies Manager Search for New Global Equity Fund
Pension pool wants High Alpha portfolio to outperform benchmark by at least 3%.
A £30 billion UK pension pool will be collecting thought leadership pieces and research documents as it readies its manager search for a new fund it is starting.
The Brunel Pension Partnership Global Alpha Equities sub-fund search wants candidates to submit their cases for heading the best-performing global equities.
“What we’re doing here is just lining up managers,” said Mark Mansley, Brunel’s chief investment officer, who added that the firm is also looking “for the ability to generate long-term alpha.”
Once the search fully starts, Brunel will call on interested fund managers to submit a brief summary as to why they’re qualified for the job, which it calls “expressions of interest.” Brunel will use Inalytics and Redington as consultants.
The sub-fund is planned to launch at year-end, aiming for a £2 billion portfolio, which Mansley hopes to be controlled by four to five managers. We’re “looking for diverse complementary approaches, but we don’t want them canceling each other out,” Mansley said. Brunel said it wants the fund to return at least 3% above benchmark, which will be mostly based on the MSCI World Index.
“The global high alpha is essentially intended to be a platform for those managers that have really high returns, [and] ambitious, concentrated portfolios,” Mansley said, adding that Brunel also wants evidence of performance and risk as well as a “variation of style and factor exposure.”
“We’re probably [also] looking for slightly different approaches to analyzing data,” the CIO said.
Interested managers can pre-register by sending their organizational details, research, and thought pieces to investments.brunel@brunelpp.org. The email should contain “Brunel Global High Alpha” in the subject line.
The pre-search will end in a few weeks, and the search’s deadline is contingent on the volume of submissions. Pre-search submissions will not gain advantages over standard search submissions.
Brunel conducted a similar procedure for its Emerging Markets Equities sub-fund, which began its official manager search this month.
The firm is also planning to create a core global sub-fund, which Mansley says is “much more focused on risk control.” It will likely be more diversified than the High Alpha fund.
Brunel runs the pension assets for 10 local government retirement plans (Avon, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Environment Agency, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire).