Investments

We manage a range of investments across many asset classes including Australian and international equities, Australian and global hedge funds, property securities and private equity. Our approach to managing risk and protecting the inherent value within our portfolios enables us to focus on investments across a range of risk / return profiles in all major asset classes to meet our changing needs.

We invest directly ourselves and also use a number of external fund managers to reduce risk through diversification of managers, their styles, approaches and regions to enhance our returns through access to the experience and knowledge of specialist managers who have skills in the regions, asset classes and approaches that we do not have in-house.

Our approach to managing our external managers includes monitoring and reviewing their investment performance, adherence to their stated investment style, compliance, changes in personnel, risk management processes and their research and development activities.

We actively seek to add value to our portfolios by constantly developing an understanding of what is happening globally at the relevant economy, sector and company level. This is at the core of our investment philosophy. Structural and economic / political change is constantly reshaping economies, industries and companies. We recognise that in this environment investors do not and cannot have perfect understanding about markets or economies or full knowledge about the forces that are creating these changes.

We recognise that investors' uncertainty about how market prices are determined can often result in the mispricing of assets in markets. This mispricing can partially explain the volatility we often see in markets. Markets misprice not because investors act irrationally, but because the extent and depth of structural and economic change means that at any one time, many investors do not have sufficient information to determine the fair value / price of an asset. We try to take advantage of these mispricing opportunities by applying a rigorous and disciplined approach to analysing markets and understanding the changes that are always happening.