ECP Asset Management has won the 2024 Golden Bull Award: Best Large-Cap Aussie Equities Manager at the 25th Australian Fund Manager Awards.
Damon Callaghan, partner, investments at ECP, also won the Best Funds Management Analyst award for the best-performing stock in the top 100 last year for his analysis of Altium.
Hosted by the Australian Fund Manager Foundation, the awards celebrate excellence in fund management whilst making a meaningful impact through philanthropy.
Dr Manny Pohl AM, ECP Asset Management’ co-founder and CIO, said the win reflects the ongoing success of the team in achieving top performance and returns for investors, thanks to the strength and calibre of its portfolio management team.
“We take pride in our firm’s culture which is central to us building a strong and experienced team of investment experts, all of whom are equal partners when it comes to decision-making. We believe this is central to our long-term investment performance.
“The ECP Growth Companies Fund returned 32.49 per cent (net of fees) over the 12 months ending 30 September 2024 outperforming the S&P/ASX 330 Accumulation index by 10.80 per cent.
“This performance is a tribute to how Jared and I set out to build the ECP business back in 2012. Taking lessons from having previously founded a funds management firm, we established three key elements that we believed would lead to success.
“The first element was to build the entire firm and team around a singular philosophy - the belief that the economics of a business will drive its long-term share price performance, best captured by owning companies in the growth phase of their lifecycle.
“The second element was employing a highly disciplined approach to take the emotion and bias out of both the research and the portfolio management process.
“And the last element was having a very clear vision of what we wanted the firm to stand for. Our team culture was steadily built upon for over a decade, and today we live or die by the performance of the entire portfolio. There's a 'no hero' and 'no blame' culture - without it our team would not have functioned as cohesively as it has for so long,” he said.
Philanthropy is also central to the firm’s culture which is evident in its annual contribution to the Pohl Foundation which was established in 2014 and who’s charter and mission is to make a meaningful difference where others may have not. It provides financial support to people, animals or things that encourages satisfaction through effort, not attainment, and embraces curiosity, creativity and creation.
Since its founding in 2012 by Dr Manny Pohl AM and Jared Pohl, ECP has grown to manage A$3 billion on behalf of its clients, investing in high quality companies in the growth phase of their lifecycle.
Co-founder and partner, Jared Pohl, says that having spent time managing funds in previous businesses, they decided to build on the lessons learned to develop a unique approach to active funds management and this has paid off.
“The team responsible for the Australian equities strategies has been incredibly stable, investing together for over 10 years on average, with the last team member joining over 7 years ago.
“We have consistently delivered market-beating performance through multiple market cycles, and it is thanks to this incredible team that we have been able to consistently deliver top quartile returns for our investors, outperforming the index and making ECP one of the leading funds management firms in the country.
“This award is a testament to the incredible work the team has done since the firm’s inception just over 12 years ago, and our goal is to continue to build on this and achieve high returns for our clients,” said Mr J.Pohl.
This win follows the ECP All Cap strategy ranking first in its peer group in the Mercer Survey for the year to 30 September 2024, and ranking highly over a 5-year period.
ECP Asset Management was established in 2012 in Sydney, Australia. The ECP All-Cap strategy was first launched in 2012 for institutional investors, followed by the launch of the ECP Growth Companies Fund for retail investors in January 2020, and more recently the Global Growth strategy in September 2020.
