DigiCo’s fee grab | Findi carves out $75m unit | Magellan axes Core series

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Magellan’s chairman Andrew Formica and his recruit Sophia Rahmani are stamping their mark on the $38 billion fund manager after a difficult period.

Street Talk can reveal the duo has shut down the majority of Magellan’s Core Series of funds, which were launched in 2020 as a way for the fund manager to muscle up to rapidly growing low-cost exchange-traded funds.

Nurtured by Hamish Douglass-era CEO Brett Cairns, the series was targeted at giving investors easy access to global equity products in the Magellan style but for half a cent in the dollar. Magellan’s head of research, Vihari Ross, who has since left for rival global equity player Antipodes, had overseen the series. However, in the end, it failed to pull in the billions that Magellan had hoped.

A series of termination notices spell the end for three funds in Magellan’s Core Series: the $9.1 million Magellan Sustainable Fund, the $27.9 million Magellan Core Global Fund and the $18.2 million Magellan Core ESG Fund. The sub-scale funds, which are also listed on Cboe, have been suspended from quotation. Termination is set for November 20.

Within the series, Gerald Stack’s Core Infrastructure fund is still going strong with $428 million under management.

David Di Pilla’s plan to jump-start the IPO market with a $1.6 billion IPO for the DigiCo REIT has put a spring in stockbrokers’ steps and received a thumping welcome from retail investors.

The rally in technology stocks and the strong rebound in the big banks pushed the Australian sharemarket higher on Thursday.

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