Fisher boss, Carmel Fisher, quickly supplied the answers to those questions (almost everybody, immediately) in a note to clients sent out last week, citing "significant crossover" of roles between the newly-merged organisations.
"We are confident that we can provide at least the same quality of service, support and decision making by absorbing these functions within Fisher Funds and in many cases we think we can improve on the existing processes," Fisher says in the client note.
As the Herald reported, Tower's Australasian equities and fixed interest portfolios will now be managed by the Fisher team as per the existing Tower mandates. Furthermore, Fisher plans to keep contracts with Tower's external fund managers, which include global bond managers Pimco and Wellington Asset Management as well as Somerset Capital Management in the emerging markets equities sector.
Fisher was quoted in the Herald saying, on the Australasian equities side there was perhaps "half a dozen" stocks that differed between the Fisher and Tower portfolios.
There's probably greater divergence between the international shares portfolios, however. Fisher Funds installed a new international shares team last September, with the aim to invest in between 30-50 global stocks based on a fundamental research process.
Tower, however, ditched its multi-manager approach for most of its international equities exposure in favour of a self-built mathematically-determined quantitative (or quant) model that enabled it to directly select overseas shares from New Zealand.
It is understood, Fisher will be retaining the Tower global quant model, although not the people who built it.
Fisher's share register has also been recast after the Tower purchase. As well as the arrival of TSB Bank as a 26.39 per cent shareholder (and the consequent reduction of Carmel Fisher's family interests in the company from just under 50 per cent to 32.18 per cent), former Fisher international shares manager, Ken Applegate, has sold down his minority stake in the firm.
