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How did last year's award-winners get on in 2010?

In late February each year, we announce the finalists and winners in our annual Fund Manager of the Year Awards. These awards – now in their 18th year in New Zealand – are determined using both qualitative research by our fund analysts, and analysis of fund managers' risk-adjusted performance track records.

It's now more than 10 months since we published the winners for 2009, and with performance numbers for the 2010 calendar year-end available, this is a good opportunity to see how our award-winners have been doing over 2010.

Brook Tasman – Domestic Equities
Brook has had a tough time of things since winning the Domestic Equities Fund Manager of the Year Award. After the shock of losing its two founders, Simon Botherway and Paul Glass, at the end of 2009 following the sale to Macquarie, the shop proved it could still hold its own with Slade Robertson and Chris Gaskin looking after the portfolios. There was therefore more bad news for Macquarie when Robertson, Gaskin, and Chief Operating Officer Mel Firmin announced in May 2010 that they were leaving to join Paul Glass' new venture, Devon. And as if it couldn't get any worse, Brook also had to absorb the loss of one of its coveted senior analysts, Justin Edgar, who has stated that he is pursuing a career outside funds management.

More positively, Brook has hired former Chief Investment Officer Andrew South, who had been at the firm from 2004 – 08. Interestingly, Brook's performance suffered most in the first quarter of thHow e year before South took the reins. Brook Tasman 23181 returned 0.10 percent for the calendar year, compared to the category average of 4.32 percent. Performance improved under South, but was still behind the average of 6.83 percent, returning 4.39 percent over the nine months to 31 December 2010. Brook can however take some comfort from its outperformance of rival Devon Trans-Tasman 22984, which produced a return of 1.92 percent over the same nine-month period.

OnePath International Share – International Equities
On the surface, a lot's happened to OnePath over the past year. In 2009, Australia & New Zealand Banking Group ANZ announced its purchase of the remaining 49.0 percent of ING's New Zealand and Australian businesses it did not already own. As a result, the former ING was rebranded OnePath in late 2010. There's been a degree of internal reshuffling, especially in the management of the business, although this has had limited impact on the team behind OnePath International Share 22885, winner of our International Equities Fund Manager of the Year Award for 2009.

There were no meaningful changes to this tried and true approach over the year. The same investment team headed by Philip Houghton-Brown ran the strategy as it had been run since 2002. The stability of this approach is noteworthy. Three complementary US-based underlying fund managers look after fixed percentages of the portfolio. The International Share fund produced another solid performance in 2010, generating a return of 6.80 percent for the calendar year compared to 4.97 percent for the category average.