PineBridge Investments has launched the PineBridge (AU) Global Focus Equity Fund, making its flagship product available to Australian wholesale investors.

According to PineBridge, the fund seeks to provide investors with capital appreciation and identify mispricing opportunities in high-quality companies to build a portfolio with more consistent and diversified returns.

The firm explained that what sets the fund apart from others is its strategy of analyzing companies based on their “life cycle” stage, rather than sector or industry.

This, he says, provides a more accurate reading of the company's potential versus the market's perception of it, resulting in a differentiated portfolio of 30–50 stocks that has a high active share and low relative risk to the benchmark.

"In a market characterized by return dispersion and elevated valuations, selectivity and risk management are more important than ever," said Rob Hinchliffe, portfolio manager and head of global sector cluster research.

"The Global Focus Equity team has consistently applied a non-consensus, strong conviction active investment approach, resulting in low correlation with competitors and a differentiated source of returns."

Elaborating on this, PineBridge said that its life-cycle capital research framework identifies the evolution of companies that typically occurs over the long term.

"As expected changes become visible to the market over time, valuations converge with fundamentals, providing the opportunity that was identified at the time of the stock purchase," the firm said.

These investment opportunities exist across the market spectrum and at every point in the economic cycle, PineBridge said, and as such the team is agnostic to style- and sector-based investing.

Clinton Grobler, Head of Australia, said: “The launch of the PineBridge Global Focus Equity Fund marks a step change in PineBridge's expansion into the Australian business.

"I believe Global Focus Equity will strongly complement PineBridge's existing product range in Australia, appealing to the core global capital appetite of investors through a differentiated lifecycle, high conviction approach combined with disciplined, benchmark-driven risk management."