Global Urban Population Megatrend

Overview

The Martin Currie Global Urban Population Megatrend strategy aims to provide for investors looking for a a total return driven by a consistent and growing income stream.

The strategy invests in a diversified portfolio of quality listed Real Asset securities including REITs, infrastructure, and utilities, from developed and emerging countries.

Our approach is premised on the philosophy that the performance of Real Assets is driven by their unique leverage to the multi-decade megatrend opportunity of urban population growth.

Our key thesis is that as urban population grows, so too will demand for Real Assets to service everyday needs. With a growing demand, coupled with the nondiscretionary nature of the services provided, Real Assets often have strong pricing power, proven cash flows, and the ability to grow income distributions regardless of the economic cycle. Given these attractive characteristics, real assets are generally less volatile than the wider equity market or sector-specific strategies and have a lower correlation with the returns of other asset classes.

While the global megatrend of urban population growth is enduring and is expected to hold well into the future, not all countries and cities are growing, and some are in fact going backwards. Our approach is to invest where Real Asset demand growth is underpinned by a naturally growing customer base, avoiding low growth regions like Japan where population declines become an investment headwind. As such we focus on select target countries, regions and cities with the most attractive demographic growth.