Hello Vinva ....
I would say welcome aboard but it looks as if you have been here for a quite a while, sitting ‘under the radar’ with 19 million shares giving you a 5.03% interest but overall only around 1.5 million shares acquired in the last four months .
I see you trade actively .
Are you the people who have been shorting us?
And why do you show your hand now?
(I know the answer to this one - it’s because you are a hotshot quant fund that everyone expects great things of and there is enormous status in flying your flag over a company as good as NRW.
Here’s a link to your website :
http://www.vinva.com/meet-our-teamThe Australian said this about you in January 2019
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/bu...s/news-story/1609ed446551c846fa393f3f7e18f3c6“Boutique fund managers ring the tills with bumper dividends....
.....That figure was more than doubled by Sydney-based Vinva Investment Group, which has about $28bn worth of funds under management and paid its group of founders and owners a bumper dividend of $49m. The group, which has shares in companies such as Flight Centre, Whitehaven Coal and Altium, made a net profit of $31.4m from revenue of $75.4m.
The firm’s accounts lodged with the corporate regulator reveal it has about $1.4bn invested in global stocks, with the remainder held in Australian equities. Vinva is a quant-driven fund that keeps a low profile but manages money for some of the country’s biggest funds.
Vinva was established by a team led by managing director and head of equity investments Morry Waked after he left BlackRock in 2010 and was later joined by key personnel such as Nick Burt and Andrew Jackson.
The group oversees a combination of active long-only and long-short strategies.
Vinva’s owners have paid out more than $150m in dividends since the fund was started.....”And here’s most of a story (that I was not able to completely grab )from AFR for anyone interested
The 'outlier': how Vinva Investment Management dominates the local quant marketDECEMBER 18, 2017
Vinva Investment Management may just be the country's biggest funds management success story that isn't talked about. The quant-driven fund, which has $25.5 billion under management, counts some of the country's largest superannuation funds as clients and has consistently outperformed its benchmark index.
It has also proven to be extremely lucrative, with Vinva already
among the most profitable independent funds in the local market; it has allowed its shareholders to pull out more than $100 million in dividends from the ...
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Murray Waked had previously been the boss of BGI's Australian operations and then Blackrock's head of equities after the acquisitions.
But he left Blackrock in March 2010, two months after other former BGI colleagues's such as Nick Burt, BlackRock's former head of research. Andrew Jackson, who took over from Waked after his departure, soon followed. Backing the venture financially were some of BGI's most well-respected managers, including Justin Wood, Bruce Goddard and Richard Grinold.
Others who joined included head of marketing Katherine Allchin, systems developer Duncan Forrest, portfolio manager Trent Larcombe and former head sales person Charlie Genocchio, to name just some.
"Prior to starting Vinva, they were one of the most successful quantitative managers in the previous decade. I think to all of us that looked at Vinva when they were launching, it was clear it was leading edge, there had been a significant investment in what they were doing," says Frontier Advisors' director of research Fraser Murray.
The cost involved for a start-up was enormous'Murray was at investment consultant Ibbotson Associates in February 2011 when it awarded a $75 million mandate from its High Alpha Trust to Vinva, becoming the first client of the Vinva Australian Equity Alpha Extension Fund.
Ibbotson had in early 2010 terminated a mandate with BlackRock following its BGI acquisition, after which it has lost the highly-regarded Waked, Jackson and Burt.
"Ibbotson had a positive view on this trio for much of the 2000s and in our opinion they were instrumental in the success of BGI. We have invested in a range of BGI products historically," Ibbotson portfolio manager of equities and property Matthew Tuxford told Investor Daily in 2011.
"The cost involved for a start-up was enormous, more than we'd seen for many start-ups," says Mr Fraser. "This was a highly sophisticated, heavily invested operation. They were going to compete against big global quant investors, this was an institutional investment firm from day one."
Vinva's timing was impeccable in some ways with the launch of its quant funds – which rely on managers using computer models to determine whether an investment is attractive – coinciding with the demise of some its rivals.
Shortly after Vinva was launched, BNY Mellon Asset Management closed its Australian and Japanese quant manager, Ankura Capital, returning about $1 billion to clients. Then the Australian arm of GMO shut down its Australian equity quant strategy in April 2012. Meanwhile, BlackRock was bedding down its BGI merger and Macquarie's Alpha Opportunities Fund was underperforming.
But there was a wrinkle.
In February 2011, just as the Ibbotson mandate had been won, Blackrock launched legal proceedings in the Federal Court, claiming Waked, Burt and Jackson had poached BlackRock employees and approached its clients. BlackRock also claimed Waked and Burt had "solicited, induced or encouraged" Jackson to leave after they had started Vinva.
Period of rapid growthAs a tactic to stall other clients from signing up with Vinva it was moderately successful. Many waited until the court action was settled in May 2011, just as the matter was set to be heard, with none of the parties admitting liability.
Vinva has grown quickly since. By June 2012, its assets under management had trebled to $4.58 billion. That figure had quadrupled by mid-2014 to $16.65 billion, by which time Vinva had launched its Asia Pacific Equity Long-Short Fund.
Vinva's assets under management have now swelled to $25.5 billion, with about $7.5 billion in various long-short strategies and $18 billion in active long-only strategies. Some market sources noted that it hasn't rolled out as many new products as it might have been able to, or may have been expected to as part of a global network, which may allow managers to focus more on the existing fund.
Its clients include industry super funds such as SunSuper and Hostplus and has been selected as a fund by wealth managers BT Funds Management and MLC. When BT appointed Vinva as a new manager for some of Australian shares portfolio in January, downsizing the allocation of the likes of Bennelong, Alphinity and Schroders in the process, it said Vinva introduced "a systematic multi-factor approach which will bring unique, diversifying sources of alpha and diversification from a process perspective, complementing the existing line up of fundamental stock pickers".
Vinva's Australian long-short fund has outperformed its the S&P/ASX 300 seven out of seven years and long-only has outperformed six of seven years. Such is the size of the fund's assets under management that it regularly pops up as a substantial shareholder in companies as diverse as Myer, Costa Group, GUD and Charter Hall, to name a few.
"What makes them good is the people. There are some high quality, and extremely smart people," said one person who has worked with the fund, noting its system was particularly sophisticated, and able to predict the alpha of a stock over three days, and which signals drive it.
Around Brexit, according to this person, Vinva's systems picked up the risks and put the right trades in place. He also noted the fund was more nuanced than traditional quants, able to identify tactical signals as well as the old-school momentum signals.
Not a standard quant fundAnother person who has worked with the fund said it was inaccurate to consider them a vanilla quant fund.
"They have always tricky to pin down in that they tell you what they are doing and are open about the things they are researching, but how it comes together in a portfolio isn't entirely transparent," he said. "They have a model and a system but because they are are knowledgeable about underlying stocks they can have a discussion about what the model is spitting out is appropriate."
He added they were reasonably high turnover, which made them a big brokerage client.
In addition to the strong performance numbers, asset consultants and market investors point out the fund has also done a remarkable job of keeping its team together. Vinva employs 21 people, though outsources activities that aren't linked to investing.
Those employees have shared in the spoils of Vinva's success, with 85 per cent of the company's shares held by its workers – with the likes of Waked, Burt and Jackson holding the biggest stakes.
As early as August 2012, the group paid dividends of $8.4 million. By September the following year, it was $14.97 million, and in 2013, the group paid $19.6 million. In November 2016, the company paid a dividend to its shareholders of $35.2 million and it is expected to exceed that this financial year. Excluding this year's dividend, $113 million has been paid since the fund opened.
"It's generally not been a market here that has been as supportive of quant investment. Vinva has been a bit of an outlier in that regard," Mr Murray said.”
(20min delay)
