Newly established funds management boutique, Vinva Investment Management, will target the intermediary market and institutional investors as it seeks to build assets under management (AUM) over the long term.
Led by former Barclays Global Investors (BGI) chief investment officer for active equities, Morry Waked, Vinva plans to initially offer institutional mandates and two pooled funds, a long-only Australian equities fund and a long/short product.
"We do not plan to go direct to retail, but rather via intermediary platforms," Waked told InvestorDaily.
"We have received a lot of interest from investors and consultants who are keen to discuss opportunities. We will be investing our own money in our funds as well.
"We are not ready to take assets for another two to three months. We have only moved into the office recently, so we have a lot of infrastructure to set up."
Vinva's philosophy for investing is to use a systematic approach, Waked said.
"We bring an insight, focus and market understanding to investing, combined with a disciplined and quantitatively driven implementation," he said.
"Our focus is on investment management performance and client performance, so we are not going to be AUM driven."
The firm currently has six staff, including head of portfolio management Nick Burt and head of client relationships Katherine Allchin.
Both Burt and Allchin were formerly from BGI.
"The idea of creating a firm began, seriously, back in March for me after I had some approaches," Waked said.
"At the time, Nick was setting up his own hedge fund. I shared with him the idea of starting an Australian equities boutique and the interest I had received."
Three retired BGI executives have provided initial capital to Vinva via a shareholding of less than 20 per cent.
They include ex-global director of research Richard Grinold, former BGI Australia chief investment officer Bruce Goddard and former BGI Australia chief executive Justin Wood.
Vinva expects to have around 15 staff by 2011, more than half of which would be investment professionals with the other half in client relationships, business development, compliance and risk management, Waked said.
Waked was at BGI for over 12 years and helped manage over $50 billion of clients' assets, both in Australia and globally. He resigned from BGI in 2009.
