Blackwattle hires from Antipodes

Blackwattle Investment Partners has launched a global equities fund and nabbed four investment staff from Antipodes to run the new strategy.

The global equities strategy lifts the number of the Sydney boutique manager's funds to five.

The four new recruits include Antipodes co-founder and portfolio manager Sunny Bangia who will lead the team tasked with building high-conviction portfolios of at least 30 stocks.

He aims to deliver long term annual returns of 8-12 per cent.

Before his eight years at Antipodes, Bangia held an analyst and trader role at Platinum Asset Manager on two separate occasions.

In between the two-year stints, he was an associate director at Westpac.

He has also held various advisory roles at Goldman Sach's private wealth management, Money Solutions and an investment consultant in money market securities at Commonwealth Bank.

Bangia will be joined by two analysts from the boutique - Edward Li and Nicholas Tan - together with trader Isaac Boorer.

Li's previous roles include Colinton Capital Partners and Macquarie Group. For his part, Tan also joined Antipodes from Platinum arriving there after eight years at TransGrid.

Meantime, Boorer - a trading assistant at Antipodes - landed from Fidante Partners.

Blackwattle investment chief said the asset manager's move into global equities is the next strategic step given current market opportunities and the performance of incumbent managers.

"We believe that our structured assessment of business quality combined with the team's extensive global experience will add significant value to our investors, and set a new benchmark in the industry", he said.

Interestingly, Blackwattle's new global quality fund will be restricted to  $10 billion of funds under management.

Skinner stated that all Blackwattle Funds are capacity-constrained well below peers to push performance over fee gathering.

"As always, we will personally invest alongside our clients into the Fund and there is no personal trading by the investment team, which is a clear distraction and conflict", he added.

"Having significant 'skin in the game' means we are 100 per cent aligned to the common interest of our clients, which is far too uncommon in the Australian funds management industry."

Since opening its doors last year, the firm has attracted such high-profile portfolio managers as Tim Riordan and Michael Teran from Aware Super, Ray David and Joe Koh from Schroders Australia and Robert Hawkesford and Daniel Broeren, who arrived from Ellerston and Watermark.