Fairlight Asset Management, a Sydney-based global small and mid-cap fund manager distributed by Perennial Partners, has appointed Abbey Cook as portfolio manager.
Ms Cook was previously a senior investment analyst and co-founder of Magellan’s Global Long/Short product and has 20 years of experience managing listed equities across Sydney, San Francisco, and New York, including a decade of investing in global markets.
Prior to Magellan, she served as a senior investment analyst for Perpetual’s Global Equities Fund and as senior investment analyst and co-founder at VGI Partners after initially beginning her equities career in investment banking at JP Morgan.
“We are delighted to welcome Abbey to the Fairlight team as we continue to build out our fund strategies and consolidate on the recent strong performance of our flagship Global Small & Mid Cap Fund,” commented Fairlight portfolio manager and partner Nick Cregan.
“Abbey is an experienced, high-calibre portfolio manager with a long track record of investment success. It’s a real coup for Fairlight to have secured her services. We look forward to the valuable contribution she will no doubt make as our firm continues to grow.”
Fairlight, which was founded in 2018, invests exclusively in global equity markets. The boutique firm says it employs three styles of investing within the global small and mid-cap market: high-quality growth, stable compounders, and special situation/low-risk turnarounds.
According to a recent investment update, Fairlight’s Global Small & Mid Cap Fund returned 17.2 per cent in the year to 31 July, outperforming its benchmark, the MSCI World Small & Mid Cap Index, by 4.8 per cent.
Since its inception in 2018, the Global Small & Mid Cap Fund has returned 12.3 per cent per annum, outperforming the benchmark by 3.2 per cent per annum.
Magellan has seen a number of departures this year. In March, Vihari Ross was appointed as a portfolio manager at Antipodes after 15 years at Magellan, where she had most recently served as head of research with responsibility for managing a 30-member global research team.
Meanwhile in July, Magellan announced that Andrew Formica was joining its board as non-executive director and both its audit and risk committee and remuneration and nominations committee.
The fund manager noted that Mr Formica would bring 30 years of experience in funds management to the role, including a three-year stint as chief executive officer and director of Jupiter Asset Management between 2019 and 2022.
In a recent update, Magellan reported that it had $39.2 billion in funds under management as of 31 July, down from $39.7 billion at the end of the month prior, continuing a downward trend for the fund manager.
Jon Bragg
Jon Bragg is a journalist for Momentum Media's Investor Daily, nestegg and ifa. He enjoys writing about a wide variety of financial topics and issues and exploring the many implications they have on all aspects of life.
