AWSJ: Asian Fund Manager Toils Alone And Rises Above Peers
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By SARAH MCBRIDE
Staff Reporter
LONDON -- The bull market has turned some fund managers into household names, but most slog away in obscurity.
Take Jill Clark, a fund manager who seemingly has everything working against her. She manages four Asian funds for Hansard Fund Managers Ltd., but she works in London so she doesn't get to the office until her markets are nearly closed. Her funds are tiny, so big brokerage firms often shun her business. And with two toddlers at home, she can't burn the midnight oil analyzing her companies.
Yet Ms. Clark has trounced most of her peers in the past year. Her Hong Kong fund, with a 12-month return of 36%, has beaten its sector's average by 12 percentage points; and her Southeast Asia fund, with a 12-month return of 12%, has beaten its sector's average by nine percentage points, according to Standard & Poor's Fund Services Ltd.
How does she do it?
Don't ask the Cambridge-educated Ms. Clark -- she's too busy to sit back and philosophize. "Let me explain to you the problem I have," she says one morning early this month. "I cover the whole of the Far East. It's a major problem."
Some big-name fund managers may have armies of researchers who handle the nitty gritty, private jets that zip them around the world, and regular television appearances that boost their profiles. But most of the thousands of fund managers who invest the world's savings lead routine lives far from the bright lights.
Ms. Clark is one. Papers cover her desk; stacks of magazines lie beneath it. Post-it notes rim her computer monitor. Every few minutes, her hard drive beeps as another e-mail pops in -- usually a plea from a broker to buy a stock. She seizes an envelope from a stack of mail and rips it open; it's a report on global rankings from Merrill Lynch. A quick scan for any mention of Asia; nothing. "Straight into the bin," she says as she lobs it toward a battered wastebasket.
She's been at work since 8 a.m., and earlier if you count the peek at the Financial Times during her short commute from London's Westminster district to her office in the City. When she reaches her desk, the first thing she does is check her Bloomberg terminal to see how Asian markets performed overnight. She makes sure that any trades she placed the day before went through, and at what price; she enters them all by hand in a log she keeps in a black binder by her computer. "Compliance department," she says. "They're tough."
Next: preparing a summary of Asian developments for the other fund managers for the daily 9 a.m. meeting. Because her firm focuses on Europe and she's the only Asian specialist there, grabbing her colleagues' attention for her part of the world can be tough, she says. She tries to keep it short.
She spends the rest of the day immersed in the nuts and bolts of investing: reading research reports, talking to brokers, deciding whether she should buy or sell, and if so, when. That particular day she learns that a Singapore health-care company she bought a year ago, Parkway Holdings Ltd., turned in bad half-year earnings. A London hospital that it owns is bleeding money, and there are no signs the company can staunch the flow anytime soon.
"Shall I sell it now?" she wonders out loud. "I hate selling on bad news -- I'll get the worst possible price." She predicts that the stock will drop a great deal that day as the market reacts to the bad news; she figures that if she waits a few days, she'll get a better deal.
Another possible sale: telecommunications and Internet giant Pacific Century CyberWorks Ltd., which she owns through a longtime holding in its predecessor, Cable & Wireless HKT. "I've got to say to myself, `Is it going to go up?' " she explains. "I have a suspicion it's heading south," as investors decide its Internet holdings aren't worth as much as they thought, she adds. "It's a very interesting stock, but what good is that to me if it doesn't blooming go up?"
To find stocks she likes, Ms. Clark takes a top-down approach, meaning she looks at sectors that she thinks will perform well and then searches for stocks within them. A couple of her top performers got added that way: Li & Fung Ltd. and Giordano International Ltd. "I noticed that retail sales were picking up in Hong Kong," she says.
Now, she's keeping an eye on the Hong Kong property market, which appears to be emerging from its slump. As she explains her views on the sector, a broker calls to pitch a property company. "I haven't invested in Hysan for years," she tells him, before promising to look into it. "One of the things I may do is a PCCW switch into Hysan," she says after hanging up, refering to Pacific Century CyberWorks.
Another broker calls to reassure her about the performance of Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical Co., which he sold her recently. The Japanese stock is now tanking. "Typical broker," she mutters after hanging up, but then allows that this is more follow-up than she gets from most. "Normally, they try to sell you some awful rubbish," she says.
To augment her research, Ms. Clark travels to Asia occasionally. Previously she went for at least three weeks a year, but now that she has a two-year-old and a three-year-old, traveling isn't as easy as it was. However, she has 12 years of Asian-funds experience to fall back on. "Most of the stocks I have in the portfolio, I will have visited the companies, I know the managers," she says. On her trips, marketing and presentations now take up about half her time. Hansard, whose clients are largely individual investors referred by financial advisers, is trying to raise its profile among investors. Ms. Clark hopes her firm will be able to boost client numbers through the greater marketing reach of its new parent, British brokerage firm Quilter & Co.
One problem hindering investor interest: fees. The funds can be purchased only though insurance plans, and some of the plans, while in line with other offshore insurance-linked funds, are quite expensive. For an investor wishing to contribute monthly, the spread between the cost of buying a share and the price an investor gets if selling a share is about 7%.
Ms. Clark hopes the funds' above-average performance will increase investor interest. "I think we'll have quite a good autumn," she says, although she's not so optimistic about the long term. "I just do not believe that the (U.S.) bull market can go on forever," she says.
But fretting over what large events the future might bring isn't her style. Of greater concern to Ms. Clark are the details. "I sometimes worry about the administrative side, with a trade going wrong," she says. Sometimes she gets so busy she forgets what she's already done; she's been known to come in planning to sell a stock, only to remember she did it the day before.
Lying awake at night wondering what is happening to markets in Asia is also rare for this fund manager. "You couldn't do the job, could you, if you really worried that much?" she says.
Two days after this Sept. 5 interview, Ms. Clark sold Parkway at S$3.87 (US$2.22), a few cents more than she would have made had she sold it the next trading day. Parkway closed Wednesday at S$3.52.
She also sold CyberWorks at HK$13.88 (US$1.78) on Sept. 7, and put the money into Hysan Development Co. at HK$11.40. CyberWorks closed at HK$9 on Wednesday, and Hysan at HK$10.25. |
