UK-based Stewart Investors has partnered with Singapore’s DBS Private Bank to offer its 22-year-old Asia Pacific Leaders strategy to investors in the city-state.

As an active, long-only equity manager, Stewart, the company notes, focuses on high-quality companies that are well positioned to contribute to, and benefit from, sustainable development. They include companies that are solving difficult problems, meeting vital needs and helping society do more with less.

The strategy, launched in December 2003, and which has been offered to investors in Europe, the UK and the US, is expanding to accredited and retail investors in Singapore for the first time through the Singaporean private bank and consumer banking channels. 

It is a bottom-up, high conviction and benchmark agnostic strategy, investing in high-quality companies in Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, with a market value of at least US$1 billion. 

Since inception, the strategy delivered an annualized return of 10.3% compared with 7.9% by the benchmark MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex-Japan Index ( gross ) during the period from 2004 to 2024.

“We are seeing investor demand for portfolio diversification in the region,” says Hugh O’Neill, the equity manager’s business head. “In addition to DBS Private Bank’s proven track record of capital preservation during market downturns, such as the Global Financial Crisis and Covid-19, our strategy has low correlation to peers and index, offering investors a valuable opportunity to diversify their portfolios amid market uncertainty.”

Kenneth Teow, the bank’s head of fund selection, adds:  “The new offering will offer diversification benefits to our clients, while providing exposure to high-quality companies with strong growth prospects that meet present and future needs of the society and environment.”