(Pictured: Gian Pandit)

They used to be called ‘swing mandates’. Now they are ‘unconstrained’ and, usually, concentrated. AMP Capital has won another $175 million for its concentrated Australian equities strategy from Nikko Asset Management’s multi-manager portfolio.

The win takes the portfolio managed by Gian Pandit, who launched the strategy when he joined AMP in late 2011, to $1.7 billion. Pandit is also co-head of the firm’s fundamental equities team, which handles a total of $6.8 billion.

The Nikko portfolio swings between value and growth looking for alpha that is uncorrelated with the broad market. While it is long only, it exhibits many of the attributes of a hedge fund.

Pandit said: “Our philosophy is simple: earnings drive share prices so we try to get the earnings right and ahead of the curve to pre-empt revisions.  Our process features a combination of rigorous bottom-up analysis combined with a top-down approach on the markets and we assess the risks from an earnings perspective.”

He said the concentrated equity strategy complemented the objective of Nikko’s multi-manager team to create value by sourcing alphas that were lowly-correlated. AMP Capital and Nikko had a range of such investment partnerships.

AMP Capital’s fundamental equities strategies have more than doubled their funds under management since 2011, from $3.2 billion to $6.8 billion.