Orbis Australia has appointed three new staff to drive the firm's push into the retail market.
The firm has appointed Johan de Lange as Orbis Australia head of retail. De Lange comes from Orbis' sister firm Allan Gray in South Africa.
De Lange built up Allan Gray's retail operations over the last ten years, which saw the firm's funds under management (FUM) increase from $1.5 billion to more than $30 billion.
He joined Orbis four months ago.
Orbis also appointed Chris Inifer and Julian Morrison as relationship managers in the intermediary channel. They joined the firm last month.
Inifer was previously a national account manager with Fidelity and also had a stint as state manager with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers.
Morrison previously worked in investment management, product management and marketing for Morgan Stanley in London and more recently for Morgan Stanley Investment Management Sydney as a business development manager.
"We are building a retail business in Australia from the ground up," De Lange said. "We will look at all our entries - it is a multi-channel strategy," he said.
Although De Lange said the strategy would include engaging research houses to provide ratings, he was hesitant to approach platform providers to get the fund listed.
"The platform business is very powerful, we are aware of that. But there are a few dynamics about our product, the price of our product et cetera, that doesn't make it a mainstream product. We are probably going to be a bit more conservative," he said.
In Australia, Orbis manages the Orbis SM Australia Equity Fund.
The fund had $1.8 billion in FUM at the end of September this year, of which about $200 million came from retail investors.
But the firm also plans to launch an opportunities fund next year, which will be primarily a cash fund and only invest in the market when significant price dislocations occur.
Allan Grey has been running a similar strategy in South Africa for nine years, called the Allan Gray Stable Fund, and it is one of the largest funds in the country.
Orbis Australia managing director and portfolio manager Simon Marais said the firm would not run more than these two funds.
"Some people have 10 equity strategies, so that they are sure at least one is performing," he said. "But you are not really accountable."
"We will keep it simple and have only two products," he said.
Orbis Australia is part of global asset manager Orbis Group, which has about $4.5 billion of FUM from Australian investors and has about US$22.4 billion in total FUM.
