John Donovan 
The Myer family office is to seed an Australian-domiciled fund to be managed by the Ranger Capital Group in the US – the Ranger Global Income and Growth Fund – which has been introduced to the market by distributor AFM Investment Partners.
John Donovan, a principal of AFM, said the Ranger strategy had provided above-market yield since its inception in 2003. The senior portfolio manager is Bill Andersen, who was a founding principal of Ranger International in 2003 after about 13 years at Driehaus Capital Management in Chicago.
The Driehaus international growth strategy managed by Andersen outperformed its MSCI benchmark by nearly 700bps a year over that period. Anderson is the CIO and senior portfolio manager of all of Ranger’s international funds.
He said: “With interest rates so low, we see a lot of investors taking too much risk in an effort to meet their income targets. It’s easy to forget that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I started this strategy 12 years ago to generate meaningful yield, not through the use of leverage or gimmicks, but through investment in a carefully selected and researched portfolio of securities from around the world.”
Jeff Middleswart, the assistant portfolio manager who joined Ranger in 2011, said the firm’s research process identified companies with strong business models and sustainable growing free cash flow. “We invest in companies which we believe are poised to generate the growing income which we seek for the Ranger fund,” he said.
The fund has an ESG policy prohibiting investment in tobacco, weapons manufacture or gaming stocks. The strategy aims to generate about half its total return from the income component.
RE to the Australian fund is Equity Trustees.