Sadiq Adatia, chief investment officer of Sun Life Global Investments Inc., employs a tactical, multi-manager approach in the portfolio funds that he co-manages. He’s able to shift between foreign and domestic asset classes, between actively and passively managed funds, and between value and growth styles.<\/p>\n
Sun Life’s managed portfolios, says Adatia,”would be a great example of our current views today, in what managers we find, and what asset classes make a lot of sense. We can also throw in a new asset class as a tactical play.” The non-core asset classes that can be held in the fund-of-funds portfolios are high-yield bonds, real estate and preferred shares, among others.<\/p>\n
Adatia, who joined Sun Life as CIO in July 2011, is the portfolio manager (along with Chhad Aul) of the Sun Life managed portfolios. He also oversees the sub-advisors of other funds, but with less day-to-day involvement. He is responsible for $8.7 billion in assets under management.<\/p>\n
Adatia says the current positioning of the managed portfolios favours equities over bonds. “Economies are improving globally, with the U.S. far ahead of everybody else right now,” he says. “Canada is benefiting obviously from the U.S., but Canada is one area where I think we have some worries on the economy side.”<\/p>\n
When the team looked at the U.S. market two and a half years ago, the research model indicated opportunities from a risk-reward perspective.” We were actually one of the first people to start overweighting the U.S.”<\/p>\n
Adatia’s favoured sectors include financial services, with his portfolios holding core positions in major Canadian banks. “Those companies, for the most part,” says Adatia,”are well run, they have good cash flows, and dividends are very strong. What you won’t see us owning is all five of the banks.”<\/p>\n
As for investment style, “we tend to have an overweight toward active [investing] right now,” says Adatia.”We know that the economy is shifting, and in that environment you just don’t want to own a name for the sake of a benchmark. It’s more of a stock-specific environment right now.”<\/p>\n
Adatia, who draws on more than 15 years of industry experience, received an honours bachelor of mathematics degree in actuarial science and statistics from the University of Waterloo in 1999. After graduating, he joined a pension-consulting firm that was bought out by Mercer Investment Consulting in 1999. He received his Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries designation in 2004 and became a CFA charterholder in 2002.<\/p>\n
Adatia’s actuarial background provided a “lens into pension plans and an understanding of financial risk,” he says. “Put a big exclamation mark on the risks because investors cannot tolerate the downside.”<\/p>\n
In 2006, Adatia joined Russell Investments Canada and became its CIO in 2008. While there, he was responsible for overseeing all domestic and foreign investment funds sold in Canada.<\/p>\n
In selecting fund managers for the Sun Life portfolios, Adatia’s research begins with a database of 4,000 different managers that are ranked as buy, hold or sell. Using various screening methods and qualitative assessments, He narrows that list to approximately 100 quality managers.
At that point, the research team meets with potential managers and narrows the list further. The final selection will depend on what specific expertise Sun Life requires. “We believe that no one manager does every asset class really well,” says Adatia.<\/p>\n
For example, within the Canadian equity portion of the mandates, Beutel Goodman & Co. Ltd. manages the value sleeve, Sun Life affiliate MFS McLean Budden the growth sleeve and BlackRock Asset Management the passive sleeve.<\/p>\n
“It’s like the all-star Team Canada” hockey team, says Adatia,”the best players in every position, rather than the Toronto Maple Leafs, with one good player or maybe two” (laughing).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Manager of managers looks to build \u201call-star\u201d team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38954,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2312,2315],"tags":[2341],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38954"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309971"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmentexecutive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=309971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}