Bridget Jones may have famously lamented about being on her own, but Platinum chief Kerr Neilson is not afraid to go out on his own.
His boutique was set up in 1994 after he left BT. He successfully built his personal fortune from a debut on the BRW Rich List in 2006 with $443 million to $3.5 billion in 2007 before the market correction took it to $1.3 billion in 2008.
However, he has no desire to join the pack and follow the index or the trends. He announced at last week’s Morningstar Investment Conference that he was willing to take a wager with anyone willing to back index managers.
It’s easy to dismiss a bet from a man with well over a billion dollars more than most of us, but he’s willing to take bold positions on other investments. He believes going against the trend has just put him ahead of new trends.
While most people are focusing on what Neilson says are “the hot and hairy” topics of the day, he is not mesmerised by those.
He wrote about the likely repricing of oil back in 2003. “We feel it’s already been played out and is no longer interesting,” he said.
Energy is considered similarly uninteresting. Other fund managers have up to 15 per cent in energy but Neilson has less than 2 per cent currently.
Instead he is focused on the “complete hound” that is pulp and paper. He also believes in the pharmaceutical sector (now cheaper than it has been for the past 30 years) and media.
And while fund managers are recently leaning towards emerging economies – China, Brazil, India and Russia – Neilson believes in Japan.
