Lipper Site To Compete Against Morningstar

by Carla Johnson, Investors Offshore, London

05 October 2001

Lipper and Company, which manages $5bn in assets for its clients, and is well known for fund rating and analysis, is to launch its own group, will open a new web-site today, lipperleaders.com, on which it will feature top-performing funds which it will call Lipper's Leaders.

At first, Lipper's Leaders will be chosen according to consistency of return and the ability to preserve capital. Robin Thurston, Lipper's director of research, said that other criteria will be added within a few months, including tax efficiency, and cheapness in terms of fees and expenses.

Lipper will be competing with Morningstar, which is well established as a fund advisory site. Thurston claims that Lipper's methodology will offer a more nuanced framework than Morningstar's mechanical system, which simply awards five stars to the funds with the best risk adjusted returns. The criticism of the star ratings is that they change frequently and merely reflect the fortunes of the markets.

Lipper & Company is a family-owned asset management and investment banking firm specializing in sophisticated investment strategies such as hedged convertible securities, merger arbitrage, high yield bonds and U.S. and European equity securities. With offices in New York, Los Angeles, Milan and London, Lipper & Company offers its products through no load mutual funds, separately managed accounts and private investment vehicles (available solely to qualified investors).

Lipper & Company was founded in 1987 as a family office. The firm's says its belief in a fundamental, disciplined approach to preserving capital and building wealth in the financial markets has attracted and gained the trust of some of the world's wealthiest families and most prominent institutions. Even today, it says, the firm's owners and employees share their clients' risks and rewards, investing their own assets side by side with those of their investors.

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