November 09, 2018

Leith Wheeler Receives Two 2018 Lipper Fund Awards

Leith Wheeler was honoured this month with Lipper Fund awards for two strategies we manage for our clients:

• Best Fund - Canadian Dividend & Income Equity (3 Years): Leith Wheeler Canadian Dividend Fund
• Best Fund - Canadian Fixed Income Balanced (3 Years): Leith Wheeler Income Advantage Fund

While recognition for the recent performance is gratifying, we don’t do it for the glory – we do it for our clients, and because we believe our approach works. So we wanted to take a moment to describe our “Quiet Money” approach to investing, and explain both our firm’s philosophy and how we generate returns in our portfolios.

“Our team of analysts prefer to identify well-run, fairly priced businesses that produce decent cash flows we believe they will be able to sustain, and potentially grow over time,” says Patrick Reddy, investment analyst and fund manager of the Leith Wheeler Canadian Dividend Fund (series B, F). “We are comfortable avoiding short-term trends and often welcome ‘temporary clouds’ that allow us to identify value opportunities we believe will benefit our investors over the long-term.”

The Leith Wheeler Income Advantage Fund (series B, F) combines a multi-strategy, high-conviction, value-focused approach. The fund blends dividend equities, investment grade bonds, and a prudent allocation to higher-yielding investments – including senior loans, preferred shares, and BB/B high yield bonds. Risk and returns are carefully measured, and the investments are rebalanced regularly to manage volatility.

The Income Advantage Fund is a retail client-focused portfolio which leverages the talents of the firm’s equity and fixed income teams, along with oversight and guidance from our Portfolio Review Committee as well as our Risk Analytics Team. This same process has been applied to our disciplined value approach for institutional and private clients for the past 35 years.

Jim Gilliland, Leith Wheeler’s President, CEO and Head of Fixed Income, explains the team takes an active, relative-value approach when seeking returns and managing risk. “Managing over $6 billion in fixed income assets positions us as a significant investor and so allows us to compete with much larger Canadian fixed income managers,” he says. “However, we are also small enough to be nimble, which allows us to screen and trade a wider universe of investable opportunities.”

As one of the few independent, employee-owned Canadian investment management firms, we are long-term investors and believe in taking a similar approach to managing our firm. Leith Wheeler’s independence allows us to attract and retain top talent and ensure that our team members always remain focused on delivering exceptional investment products and services to our clients. 

We help our clients look beyond the hype, to take a diligent and disciplined approach to investing.

About Leith Wheeler:

For over 35 years, Leith Wheeler Investment Counsel Ltd. has provided investment management services to some of Canada’s most prominent pension plans, foundations, endowments, universities, corporations, private clients and families. We have grown to become one of Canada’s largest independent, employee-owned wealth managers with 90 employees and over $19 billion in assets under management.

Our disciplined value style has produced results that have helped clients meet their long-term investment goals. We believe that both return generation and preservation of capital are of critical importance when investing. We hope that our results speak for themselves – on average, our clients have entrusted Leith Wheeler to manage their assets for over 15 years. 

James Dungate

Principal - Investment Funds