Big news in the Japan shareholder activist and Australian asset management landscape that has likely flown under the radar.
Ian Macoun’s ASX-listed Pinnacle Investment Management (ASX: PNI, A$4.2bn market cap) has acquired Asset Value Investors – one of the mid-sized Japan activists, and operator of the AJOT UK listed investment trust, via PNI’s subsidiary Pacific Asset Management.
This adds to Pinnacle’s existing exposure to Japan via its stake in and distribution relationship with PE firm Advantage Partners. Advantage also operates a public-markets business, where it takes stakes in companies via mechanisms such as convertible bond issuance and seeks to help the companies improve corporate value (this has the added benefit to the companies of providing protection against activists under the cover of acting in shareholder interests – despite the implied dilution).
Why is this relevant? Pinnacle is a global distribution powerhouse that has scaled many successful boutique asset managers to tens of billions of dollars of AUM – for example: Antipodes Partners and Hyperion Asset Management. It has evolved from its boutique-seeder / GP-staking origins, to now manage $229bn (at 100% of affiliate AUM) across fully and partially owned subsidiaries and affiliates.
Pinnacle has a sizeable stable of affiliated asset managers:
In Australia alone, Pinnacle has more than 50 distribution people covering retail, wholesale, and institutional. Globally, they have close to 100.
Pinnacle has already been educating the Australian market on the opportunity in Japan due to the Advantage relationship.
Many more Australian investors / allocators are likely to be learning a lot more about the opportunities in Japanese shareholder activism in the near future.
