Financial Standard names Investment Manager of the Year

Financial Standard has named the winners of its 2025 Investment Leadership Awards, recognising the best investment managers across Australian and international equities, property, infrastructure, fixed income, and multi-asset categories.

The Financial Standard Investment Leadership Awards highlight investment managers and investment products that have demonstrated exceptional performance in terms of returns and risk controls.

According to Rainmaker Information, the publisher of Financial Standard, investment leadership isn't only about achieving performance nor is it only about managing risk.

"It's about developing and managing investment strategies that are most suited to the journey that every investor undertakes in order to secure their investment goals, be they long term capital growth or a retirement that minimises financial stress," Rainmaker said.

To identify strategies that meet this criteria, Financial Standard and Rainmaker developed a quantitative data-driven methodology to find which investment managers persistently demonstrated an ability to deliver investment outcomes expected by their investors.

"The Financial Standard Investment Leadership Awards aren't a replacement for qualitative and blended investment ratings systems. They are complementary," Rainmaker said.

Based on Rainmaker's analysis of unlisted unit trusts and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), covering six major asset classes over 22 categories, Macquarie Asset Management won the Investment Manager of the Year for the sixth time.

Macquarie also won the Australian equities active core, Australian equities small cap, and international equities active core categories for the Macquarie Australian Enhanced Plus Equities Fund, Macquarie Australian Small Companies Fund, and Arrowstreet Global Equity Fund, respectively.

Acadian Asset Management, MLC Asset Management, Perpetual Investment Management, and Vanguard were the other investment managers to win multiple awards.

Acadian won in the international equities (high active risk and ESG) category for its Acadian Global Equity Fund.

MLC Asset Management took the multi-asset (capital stable and balanced) with its MLC MultiActive Moderate and MLC MultiActive Balanced funds, respectively.

Perpetual won in fixed income (aggregate bonds and credit/absolute return) with its Perpetual Active Fixed Interest Fund - Class A and Perpetual Diversified Income Fund - Class A, respectively.

Vanguard took the international equities (indexed/enhanced) category with its Vanguard International Shares Select Exclusions Index Fund and multi-asset (growth) with its Vanguard Diversified High Growth Index ETF.

U Ethical Investors was awarded Australian equities ESG product of the year for the U Ethical Australian Equities Trust - Wholesale, which also won in 2023 and 2024.

"Our role is to help investors identify which products should be part of their decision-making process," Rainmaker head of investment research John Dyall said.

"The Investment Leaderships Awards are a way to recognise those products and managers that we believe will consistently fulfil the investment needs of those investors."

For a full list of winners click the link.