Australian Ethical wins fund manager award

The Australian Ethical Balanced Trust has won the 2005 Australian Fund Award in the Balanced Funds – Neutral category. The award, made by the international credit and fund rating agency, Standard & Poor’s, was announced last night (25 August) at an awards dinner in Sydney.

The chief executive officer of Australian Ethical Investment, Anne O’Donnell, said she was delighted that Australian Ethical had won the award.

‘For those of you who don’t know Aust Ethical we are a deep green boutique fund manager based in Canberra. Our investment universe is established by way of our Ethical Charter which incorporates a negative and a positive screen.
‘We are a pioneer in the field of ethical investment in Australia and have been providing investors with ethical investment choices for almost 20 years.

‘Frustratingly, we have spent and still do spend a lot of time countering the argument that in order to invest ethically you have to forgo returns. This award is a great vindication of our argument that you do not. In fact you may even do better.

‘Next time you hear this argument you will be able to speak with authority that this is indeed not case when it comes to Australian Ethical.

‘A fund manager is only as good as their investment team. Ours is a group of brilliant and dedicated people, to them, a special thank you.’

The awards are calculated using a relative risk-adjusted ratio that evaluates the performance and consistency of performance of a fund relative to its peers. The Australian Ethical Balanced Trust has been a good performer since it was founded in 1989. The trust and the parallel super strategy – the Australian Ethical Superannuation Balanced Strategy – have been among the top performers in their categories over three and five years. See for example the multisector 60 categories of managed investments and super in Money Management, 18 August 2005, and The Australian Financial Review, 24 August 2005. Note that past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance.

Australian Ethical has about $360 million under management. For details of the performance and portfolio lists of Australian Ethical funds, visit www.austethical.com.au

For background or comment, please contact
Anne O’Donnell
phone 02 6201 1943