Investment approaches
Multi-Asset Income
A fully flexible multi-asset strategy, aiming to source the best income-producing opportunities across asset classes and the capital structure
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Flexible, global approach, allowing us to invest without any sector, country or asset class constraints
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Focus on sustainable income, with an eye to capital growth
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Stable monthly income payments
Our philosophy and process
- A constantly evolving and forward-looking approach seeks to anticipate change, manage risk, and identify opportunities. ESG considerations are integrated throughout the research process and via proprietary quality reviews, to ensure that any material issues are captured.
- The strategy invests in a diversified range of assets, from equities and bonds to alternative assets. Income is set at portfolio level, allowing the manager to determine where best to achieve income and where to seek capital growth.
Every time we consider a security or look at an industry or country, it’s in the context of what’s happening across the world. We believe the investment landscape is shaped over the long term by some key trends, and we use a range of global investment themes to capture these.
China influence
The influence of China on the world has grown exponentially but its economy looks increasingly risky. ‘China influence’ looks at how the country’s development affects the investment outlook beyond its borders.1
1 Compared to more established economies, the value of investments in emerging markets may be subject to greater volatility owing to differences in generally accepted accounting principles or from economic or political instability or less developed market practices.
State intervention
Authorities have engaged in ever-greater policy intervention and regulation to shore up economic growth. We believe ‘state intervention’ has increased misallocation of capital, caused volatility in markets and inflated asset prices – and we think that calls for a stock-specific approach.
Financialisation
Cheap money has caused rapid growth in a sector already supported by deregulation. ‘Financialisation’ investigates the implications of finance dominating economic activity, instead of serving it.
Consumer power
Technological advances are increasingly shifting the power to consumers in the marketplace. With the ability to compare prices and products independently now in the hands of the consumer, businesses must adapt to a changing commerce landscape, as their customers seek out better experiences, authenticity and value. Our ‘consumer power’ theme addresses these trends.
Transcript
At the same time, low income yields on traditional investments like cash and bonds are making it harder for pension schemes to meet their cash-flow and funding requirements without taking on increased investment risk.
Our Multi-Asset Income strategy aims to help investors meet their income requirements and offers the potential for capital growth.
So how does it do this?
First, we take a global and fully flexible approach. We believe multi-asset investing is as much about what you don’t own as what you do. We are not constrained by a benchmark, so we can focus on seeking out the most attractive securities without any artificial sector, country or asset-class constraints.
We harness a broader investible universe than just bonds or equities, and look for opportunities within alternatives such as infrastructure, renewables and real estate. We consider the full capital structure of each company, and only invest in the part of the capital structure that we believe best supports the strategy’s income-generating objective.
Secondly, our global investment themes guide security selection – they help us to understand the key long-term drivers of economies, industries and asset classes. Our themes highlight areas of opportunity, while helping us to avoid risks.
And, finally, we focus on finding income opportunities which are sustainable andcan weather times of market distress. This is vital in our aim to provide a durable, consistent income stream, with the potential for capital growth over the longer term.
Capital markets can be volatile, but we believe income should be predictable. Our Multi-Asset Income strategy takes a diversified, global approach to identifying securities which we believe can generate sustainable income and an attractive total return for our clients
Investment team
Our Multi-Asset Income strategy is managed by an experienced team. Our global sector analysts and investment managers are located on a single floor in London, which helps to ensure that the investment process is flexible and opportunistic. Guided by our global investment themes, the team works together to identify opportunities and risks through research and debate.
- 26
- years' average investment experience
- 16
- years' average time at Newton
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Paul Flood
Portfolio manager, multi-asset team
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Bhavin Shah
Portfolio manager, multi-asset team
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Freeman Le Page
Alternatives investment analyst and SRI client director
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Charles French
Deputy chief investment officer
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Oliver Larminie
Portfolio manager, charities and specialist institutions
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Joo Hee Lee
Multi-Asset Solutions manager
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Hilary Meades
Portfolio manager, Multi-Asset team
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Simon Nichols
Portfolio manager, UK equities
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Rob Stewart
Head of responsible investment research
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Tim Wilson
Head of global strategy
Strategy profile
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Objective
- To provide income with the potential for capital growth over the longer term by investing in a broad diversified multi-asset portfolio
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Performance aim
- Aims to yield 30% more than a reference yield comprising 60% MSCI AC World Index (equities) and 40% hedged BofA Merrill Lynch Global Broad Market Index (bonds).
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Volatility
- Expected to be between that of bonds and equities over the long term
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Strategy size
- £450m (as at 31 March 2020)
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Strategy inception
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Composite inception: 1 March 2015.
Strategy factsheet
Performance and commentary for the last quarter.
Responsible investment report
Stewardship activities (voting and engagement) for the last quarter and ESG metrics.
Brochure
More detail on the strategy's investment approach.
Fund performance
Key Investor Information Document
Quarterly video update: Q1 2020
Your capital may be at risk. The value of investments and the income from them can fall as well as rise and investors may not get back the original amount invested.