Tribeca Investment Partners’ star fund manager Jun Bei Liu to take Aussie share fund to new venture

Star Australian share fund manager Jun Bei Liu is striking out on her own with the backing of her long-time employer Tribeca Investment Partners.

Ms Liu’s new firm is set for a big head-start when it starts in January thanks to plans to take over management of Tribeca’s $1.5 billion Alpha Plus share fund.

Alpha Plus has helped turn Ms Liu into a high profile investment manager since Tribeca founder and chief investment officer David Aylward promoted her to run the fund in 2019.

“The timing is right,” the Sydney-based Ms Liu said. “It is being done with Tribeca’s blessing and the support of clients.”

Tribeca said in a statement the new structure was “designed to more closely align the values and investment styles of both Jun Bei and Tribeca with their respective skillsets and approach to markets”.

“Jun Bei’s progression from an investment analyst in 2005 to a portfolio manager has been marked by significant achievements,’” Tribeca said.

Mr Aylward, who founded Tribeca in 1998, will be a member of the advisory board for Ms Liu’s new firm.

For the advisory board, Ms Liu said she planned to recruit others with expertise diverse fields to sit alongside Mr Aylward and help her “consider strategies and the future of the fund”.

Her move reportedly has the support of big Tribeca backer UniSuper, which has more than $400m invested with the manager.

She is on the verge of signing a lease for the new venture but had not yet decided on its name.

Alpha Plus fund seeks to beat the all-ordinaries index by not only selecting to buy based on share fundamentals and mathematically driven quantitative analysis

The fund can also take short stock positions equating to up to half of its net asset value in a bid to boost investment returns and achieve its objective of beating the accumulated returns of the S&P-ASX 200 index.

Morningstar figures show the fund has achieved a 12.9 per cent annual return over the past five years, compared with an S&P-ASX 200 return of 8.4 per cent.

In addition to beating traditional share managers, Alpha Fund also boasts regularly beating other fancier rivals.

With one relatively junior employee from Tribeca possibly to come with her, Ms Liu said she still had to recruit people to help fulfil Alpha Plus’s mission of investing in high quality Australian shares while retaining “good control of risk”.

“I will build an entire team with a specific skill set for the fund,” she said.

She said her venture would allow her to pursue her own ideas while retaining links to Tribeca, which would provide back office services plus some accounting, information technology and risk management services.

“For clients, nothing will change — except the address will be different,” she said.