Martin Currie Real Assets

Martin Currie’s Specialist Real Asset platform

At Martin Currie, our award wining team of Real Asset specialists have been investing in the listed Real Asset space for over 35 years and manage billions of dollars in the sector.

Our listed Real Asset strategies invest in a distinctive blend of listed Real Assets, including Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), infrastructure, and utilities. To us, this blend of listed Real Assets is well aligned to capture income and capital growth from the secular megatrends that drive Real Asset demand:

• Urbanisation and population growth drives increased need for the Real Assets that are the essential building blocks of a growing economy.
• Energy demand supports Real Assets that provide renewable generation, grid enhancements, and electrification initiatives.
• Technology and data consumption growth driven by AI boosts demand for data centres, fibre optic networks, and telecommunication infrastructure.

Our approach is to invest in Real Assets operating in regions experiencing strong demographic growth, avoiding areas with declining populations and thus declining demand. In addition to Australia, we have found large and liquid listed Real Asset companies with long histories of paying consistently growing dividends with attractive investment opportunities to capture long-term urbanisation-led growth particularly in Asia (ex Japan), UK, Europe, Canada and the US.

We also only invest in very liquid and transparent listed names. And by combining and blending REITs, infrastructure, and utilities with attractive income attributes, we can strategically manage exposures to components within each sector. This helps to improve income generation characteristics and mitigate risks associated with individual sectors or assets – such as higher risk office/commercial properties, low-yield airports, or ESG-challenged utilities.

By investing in a benchmark-unaware manner, with stocks selected carefully by our dedicated Real Assets specialists and a clear focus on client objectives, our approach is distinct from traditional equity portfolios, income-focused strategies or stand-alone property or infrastructure portfolios. Furthermore, as our Real Asset strategies typically are defensive, with lower beta and lower correlation with global equities, infrastructure or property sector-specific strategies and other asset classes, they bring diversification benefits to a broader portfolio.

The long-term appeal of listed Real Assets

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Meet the Real Assets team

Based in Melbourne, Australia, Martin Currie’s suite of Real Assets strategies are managed by a highly experienced and deeply resourced Listed Real Asset team.

With an average experience of 23 years, and 15 years* of tenure, each member contributes specialised research expertise and a passion for investment excellence to our range of listed Real Asset investment strategies. Stewardship is a critical element of our process, and responsibility for ESG analysis, proxy voting and engagement lies directly with those who know the companies best – our research analysts and portfolio managers.

*As of 31 December 2024