Melbourne: 10 June 2008 - Unitholders have voted in favour of Australian Unity Investments (AUI) becoming Trustee of the Wingate Opportunity Fund and the Wingate Spectrum Fund.
AUI and Wingate announced their international equities joint venture on May 20, with the change in trustee for Wingate’s existing international equities funds approved at a meeting of unitholders on 4 June.
The international equities joint venture is the fourth for AUI, which has Acorn Capital in Australian microcaps, Platypus Asset Management in Australian equities and Vianova Asset Management in fixed interest.
Mr Farrel Meltzer, founder and chief executive officer of the Wingate Group said that unanimous unitholder approval for the proposal was a strong endorsement of the support AUI can provide Wingate Asset Management with marketing, distribution, regulation and administration.
“By outsourcing these activities we are actively ensuring that our investment professionals can stay focused on managing the money,” he said.
Ms Kirsty Dullahide, head of strategy and portfolio management at AUI said the immediate priorities are to ensure a very smooth and straightforward transition in trustee for existing investors and to make the fund available to new investors.
Wingate Asset Management is a boutique international equities fund manager with a large capitalisation, value based investment philosophy. The Wingate Opportunity Fund (the Fund) is managed with an emphasis on generating regular and consistent income. The Fund is benchmark unaware and since the Fund’s inception in October 2005 has returned 40.8% compared to the MSCI World Index (in A$) of -0.4% as at 30 April 2008.
Australian Unity Investments is the funds management arm of financial services, health and retirement living services provider Australian Unity. It has over $6.6 billion in funds under management. Its approach to product development is to use its established in-house expertise in property and mortgages while also forming joint ventures and strategic alliances with other organisations with specialist expertise.
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For more information please contact:
Mr Farrel Meltzer
Email: fmeltzer@wingategroup.com.au
Ms Kirsty Dullahide
Email kdullahide@australianunity.com.au