United Kingdom-based Aspect and CFS on 21 January announced a deal whereby CFS would be able to exclusively market a range of funds managed by Aspect to retail investors in Australia and New Zealand.
Select head of portfolio management Robert Graham-Smith said it was possible the Aspect Futures Fund could be wound up, partly due to the Aspect/CFS deal but also because Select shifted focus in 2009 towards distributing its own multi-manager portfolios.
"We have a great relationship with Aspect and the deal they've done with CFS is consistent with our intention to refocus our business on our core multi-manager offerings rather than represent single investment managers in Australia," Graham-Smith said.
"We continue to rate Aspect highly and I would emphasise that Aspect would continue to be one of the fund managers within our multi-manager portfolios including Select Growth, Select Defensive and Select Alternatives."
Commonwealth Bank of Australia-owned CFS plans to launch an Aspect fund on its FirstChoice platform and on FirstWrap in the first quarter.
"In addition, we will look to extend this fund across other retail channels and explore opportunities to roll out further structured products using Aspect's alpha-generating capacity throughout the year," CFS chief executive Brian Bissaker said.
Aspect is a research-driven investment manager that applies a systematic approach to capture price trends in both rising and falling markets.
