Public Mutual bags 10 awards

Public Mutual bags 10 awards

By GOH EE KOON
Wednesday February 14, 2007

Media Player / Real Video

KUALA LUMPUR: Public Mutual Bhd repeated its feat for the fourth straight year, sweeping 10 out of the 26 awards given out yesterday at The Star/Standard & Poor’s Investment Funds Award Malaysia 2007 to honour the country’s best performing funds.

Last year, it took home half of the total of 18 awards given out.

Public Mutual won in the three- and five-year categories, while OSK-UOB Unit Trust Management Bhd won in the one-year category.

Group awards are presented to companies to reflect consistent performance across all sector categories in the Malaysian unit trust funds industry.

Prudential Unit Trusts Bhd improved its showing with three wins against last year’s two, taking home awards for the smaller companies, fixed income (Islamic) and asset allocation (MYR defensive) categories. Other winners were HLG Unit Trust Bhd, CMS Trust Management Bhd, AmInvestment Group Bhd, RHB Unit Trust Management Bhd, TA Unit Trust Management Bhd and ASM Mara Unit Trust Management Bhd.

Standard & Poor’s managing director Surinder Kathpalia in his speech said 2006 was another year of strong growth for the fund management industry in the country, with improved fund performance, continued growth in the number of funds and net asset values, and a greater variety of asset types.

“Winners this year truly represent the standard of excellence in the Malaysian unit trust market,” he added.

The Star group chief editor Michael Aeria said: “Even without the benefit of statistics, we are well aware of the rapid growth of the unit trust industry; the dynamism and innovativeness of the players are simply too newsworthy to ignore.”

Aeria added that while the best performers in Malaysia’s investment management industry were honoured yesterday, sound investment principles should continue to guide investors amidst the current market exuberance.

Group chief editor Michael Aeria, Deputy Finance Minister I Datuk Dr Ng Yen YEn, chairman of Public Bank Bhd, Tan Sri Teh Hong Piow and managing director of Standard & Poor Surinder Kathpalia at the award ceremony.

Deputy Minister of Finance I Datuk Dr Ng Yen Yen officiated at the awards ceremony.

Standard & Poor’s Fund Awards are organised in 18 countries around the world. Candidates for the awards are assessed using the Relative Risk-Adjusted Ratio methodology which measures funds’ consistency in outperformance relative to their fund peers.

Comments

Tan Sri Teh Hong Piow
Chairman
Public Bank Bhd/Public Mutual Bhd

Tan Sri Teh Hong Piow

We are very happy and proud that Public Mutual continues to win the most number of awards and this is because we have a very professional team in place. We will continue to strive further.

We plan to launch eight to 10 new funds this year. Our strategy would be to expand the agency much further, and perhaps open more branches.

Lam Kam Yin
CEO
Public Mutual Bhd

This is the fourth consecutive year where we have won the highest number of awards. We are very delighted and this will inspire us to work harder to achieve consistent above average returns. We thank our unitholders for their support and confidence.

We have a fundamental approach towards stock investing and are backed by a strong team of fund managers as well as a very experienced investment committee.

The local market is underpinned by a lot of liquidity, good dividend yields and reasonable valuations. We will continue to grow our agency force and provide training to our agents to serve our investors better.

Jason Chong
Chief Investment Officer
OSK-UOB Unit Trust Management Bhd

We are pleasantly surprised to have won the one-year group award. Our best performing fund – the Smart Balanced Fund – was up 52% last year.

We are in the middle of a liquidity rally. In previous rallies, market valuations had gone past 30 times price earnings ratio. Looking at the last seven years, the market breached more than 20 times PE on at least five occasions. Pegging the market at 20 times PE at current valuations would place the KL Composite Index at 1,560 points.

Looking at the performance of local versus overseas funds last year, investors should not be carried away, given that local funds had outperformed regional funds.

For normal asset allocation, an investor should have a 50:50 allocation in local and overseas funds. This is the norm throughout the world.

Teo Chang Seng
Acting CEO/executive director
HLG Unit Trust Bhd

Our funds have done well and our fund managers will strive hard to deliver top quartile performance. We have products suitable for each category of investors, ranging from the conservative to the aggressive.

We have won the two S&P awards for our more conservative products, the HLG Bond Fund and HLG Dana Maa’rof. We also have performing equity products that are more aggressive in nature - the HLG Strategic Fund and HLG Penny Stock Fund.

S. Kumaravelloo Pillai
CEO
CMS Trust Management Bhd

Our stock picks were excellent and we managed to get into the respective sectors at a time when the stocks were relatively cheap and this resulted in our funds doing very well.

For this year we are planning to launch five new funds.

Datin Maznah Mahob

Datin Maznah Mahbob
CEO
AmInvestment Bank Group

It sure feels good to win this year and it is the second time that we have won the award.

This year we are going to come up with a number of innovative products, just as we did last year. We plan to launch more structured funds and those niches in certain assets classes currently not available in the market place such as equities, hybrid and fixed income.

Lynn Cheah
Chief Investment Officer
Prudential Unit Trusts

We expect many more new unit trust fund launches this year but the demand would be for funds with offshore mandates and structured products packaged with capital protection and guarantee.