“I eat my own cooking”: Minack

Former global chief equity analyst at Morgan Stanley, Gerard Minack has been appointed as an external consultant to Maple-Brown Abbott’s Global Macroeconomic Advisory Committee, as the boutique funds manager pushes its new retail listed infrastructure fund.

Maple-Brown Abbott launched its global listed infrastructure (GLI) strategy in February, seeded with $35 million from friends and family of the firm’s co-founder, the late Robert Maple-Brown.

The strategy, which now has over $70 million under management, is run by Robert Maple-Brown’s youngest son Andrew (pictured), joined by fellow former Macquarie Group analysts Justin Lannen, Steven Kempler and Lachlan Pike.

Andrew Maple-Brown said the retail appetite for listed infrastructure was increasing as investors started to move out of cash and fixed income in search of higher yields.

He forecasted that listed infrastructure will deliver real returns of around 5.5 per cent over the medium-to-long term with lower risk than global equities.

Minack, who is joined on the Global Macroeconomic Advisory Committee by Pike and Capital Economics chief global economist Julian Jessop, said returns from listed infrastructure looked attractive given the long-term outlook for global equities was weak with US equities on track to deliver real returns of 2 per cent per annum over the next decade.

He drew parallels between the US and Europe today with Japan in the 1990s, with similarities such as high debt levels, weak growth, weak inflation and low interest rates.

“The big macro forces will probably play into the hands of infrastructure investors,” Minack said, adding that his own personal portfolio had a healthy exposure to listed infrastructure.

“I eat my own cooking and invest in infrastructure,” he said.

“One by-product of what the central banks have done is destroyed the prospect of decent returns in safe assets like government bonds. Furthermore, there are very obvious problems with high yield debt in that the yield is no longer high but the credit risk is still high, and that is also pushing investors into assets such as listed infrastructure.”

This month, Maple-Brown Abbott launched a retail version of its wholesale infrastructure fund. The retail product has a $20,000 investment minimum.

The group also released two white papers: Global Infrastructure in a Portfolio and Infrastructure – a single asset class.