Disciplined approach is all it takes

Oksana Patron

4 October 2022

Logical and disciplined approach to the real estate investment has seen the SGH LaSalle Concentrated Global Property claim victory in the Equity Global Real Estate category at the 2022 Financial Newswire-SQM Research Fund Manager of the Year.

The fund is an actively managed portfolio that invests primarily in listed property securities such as global Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and offers access to broad opportunity sets which include large investable universe comprising REITs and Real Estate Operating Companies (REOCs) listed on major world stock exchanges in the US, Canada, Western Europe, Asia and Australia, and possibly select emerging markets including some of the best properties and operators.

The fund offers liquidity by tradeable securities versus investing directly in property as well as access to the expertise of a specialist investment boutique structure in SG Hiscock and a dedicated global property securities manager in LaSalle.

Baltimore-based portfolio manager, Matthew Sgrizzi said: “It’s very logical and disciplined approach that we have to the real estate investments and [we think] investors should have real estate as a part of their investment portfolios because we need an asset class that acts differently from stocks and bonds.”

He stressed that being a part of Jones Lang LaSalle gives the fund an access to the “fantastic, timely and accurate real estate market information” and network.

However, what contributed to the fund’s positive performance is that this information is being applied by a strong and experienced investment team, with an added experience of portfolio managers of 22 years.

“It’s the complete package,” Sgrizzi said.

“We have really put it all together: great information, great people, disciplined intel and accurate process. This helps us to be in the best position to identify the most attractive real estate investment opportunities around the world on a regular basis.”

In the June update of the fund, the manager said that markets around the world saw sharp sell-off in the second quarter of 2022, as a mix of high inflation and slowing economic growth expectations which weighed on returns on equities, bonds and GREITs, and although the fund was not totally immune to this dynamic and fell around 9% in the quarter, it was much less that the GREIT universe which declined about 15% in Q2.

In fact, the fund continued to protect the clients from downside risks in Q2 and built on its strong relative performance in the first quarter and outperformed the investment universe by over 9 percentage points in the first half of 2022, Sgrizzi said.