Thornbridge provide investment management services to UCITS funds and is the investment manager for the Thornbridge Nissay Japan Contrarian Value Equity Fund. Thornbridge firmly believes that the asset management industry needs to think harder about strategies, work closely with governments and focus its efforts on financing the right projects and advocating the right policies. Asset managers have become more vocal about dropping stocks that fail to address environmental issues but companies do not disappear because managers decide not to own them.

Thornbridge Nissay Japan Contrarian Value Equity Fund

Nissay Asset Management (NAM) supports the Thornbridge Nissay Japan Contrarian Value Equity Fund, with Eizo Tomimura as the Investment Advisor. NAM believes focusing on Cash Flow Return on Investment (CFROI), to evaluate future changes in earnings quality, enables it to exploit inefficiencies in the Japanese market and avoid value traps. This is possible given the market’s over-reliance on the past (using traditional valuation metrics such as P/E, PB), whereas CFROI, which incorporates ESG factors, places emphasis on the future at a time when significant change is occurring in the Japanese market. NAM’s long-term investment horizon, and focus on fundamentals, gives it the ability to look through quarterly earnings results unlike many others. Time arbitrage is possible in the Japanese equity market given the short-term and price insensitive nature of many market participants (e.g. retail investors, ETFs).