I didn't get any. Sent in an application on special allocation (prefer not to say what, exactly) but returned saying they received it too late. Sent on 9/05 and it should have got there on 10/05 but it wasn't received,/ wasn't processed/.

A friend applied for 8000. He has been a happy holder since 1992 of Managed Funds. he got an allocation of 4640.

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And a note about happy holders in for the long term. I find the sentiments expressed to be largely true. Of course, it is a generalisation:

Success May Be Downfall of a Perfectly Good Fund: Chet Currier

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid= ... st_currier

By Chet Currier

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- Great success can be one of the thorniest problems an investment manager ever confronts.

It's one thing to rack up nice returns when a strategy is new and the amount under management is small. The job may prove different after those early gains attract heaps of additional money from investors, and the fund that used to maneuver like a sports car comes more and more to resemble a dump truck.

``Asset bloat'' is the term analysts at the Chicago firm of Morningstar Inc. use in their mutual-fund research.

``The worst effect of the asset bloat phenomenon is simple,'' Morningstar says. ``The more money a fund has in it, the less nimble it becomes. If a fund's asset base increases too much, its character necessarily changes.''

Some fast-growing funds close to new investors to try to mitigate this effect. Others resist any such move, insisting they can handle the extra load.

Closings don't always solve the problem anyway, especially if a fund leaves its doors open to additional investments by retirement-plan members or to all clients of brokers and advisers who have existing accounts. The damage may not be immediately visible to the casual onlooker.

At its devilish worst, asset bloat can give everyone an exaggerated view of how much money a fund is actually making for its investors as a group.

Doing the Math

``A successful fund attracts massive amounts of money and then, later, performance gets very mediocre,'' said Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., during a question-and-answer session at Berkshire's annual meeting early this month. ``Then they keep publishing their results for the whole period. If you made the same computation per dollar, controlled per year, you'd have a much lower rate of return for these people.''

What to do, as a fund investor, to protect yourself? Fortunately, vast amounts of information are published regularly about funds, and anyone can monitor them closely for changing performance patterns.

Look at the biggest of all funds, Capital Group Cos.' $166 billion Growth Fund of America, whose assets have more than quadrupled in the past five years, from $36 billion in 2002. The fund has achieved that dazzling growth with some impressive long-term results, including a return over the past five years through the end of last week of 11.6 percent a year, according to my Bloomberg.

Through the Years

To check for the effects of asset growth, we can simply compare that five-year number against the three-year return, which is 14.7 percent annualized; the one-year return, which is 11.3 percent, and the return for 2007 to date, which is 7 percent. While the most recent numbers aren't as good as the five-year results, the three-year figure is better.

Simple return numbers like these are subject to the ups and downs of the stock market generally. To control for this, we can check instead the amounts by which the fund beat or trailed a market benchmark, such as the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Bloomberg data show the Growth Fund of America outperformed the S&P 500 by 2.2 percentage points a year in the past five years, and by 1.5 points in the past three years. In the past year, it lagged the index by 6.2 percentage points.

Aha! An investor may read this as a tentative signal, at least, that the fund is feeling the weight of its burgeoning assets. Fund performance is always a moving target, and the Growth Fund is back beating the S&P 500, by 0.15 percentage point, for 2007 to date. Still, the fund clearly merits a place on the asset-bloat watch list.

Common Hazard

The problems posed by asset growth are often cited as a reason to shun actively managed funds in favor of index funds, which keep the same shape (that of the index on which they are based) as they grow. Well, index funds aren't immune to the effects of shifts in market conditions.

Funds based on the S&P 500 attracted huge asset flows in the late 1990s. Wouldn't you know, the S&P 500 then embarked on a sustained period of sluggish performance as the big stocks that dominate the index lagged behind small stocks.

The lesson to be learned here seems broader than a simple question of index funds versus active funds. In the money- management game, anything that enjoys a surge of popularity bears especially close attention afterward.

(Chet Currier is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

I didn't get any in the priority offer either. I received a cheque back today for the same amount I sent in, ie I got no shares at all. I have had shares in PMC since 2001 and I sent in the application the same day I received the form.

It seems the unitholders of the unlisted funds got priority over the PMC shareholders.

At least they sent the cheque back promptly.

I did get some broker firm shares for the SMSF thru Comsec.

I was intending to keep the SMSF ones and sell any I got thru the priority offer. Now I will have to decide on a new strategy.

At least I have some shares, though.

They list on Wednesday.


Cheers

LJ

I put in for 4000, and got 4000. Very happy. I'm a long term holder of their funds. Also hold Hunter Hall.

Cheers.

been a while since this outfit was discussed - there is this thread and also some recent mentions in LICs (for PMC which the listed version of Platinum International) which is somewhat lost.

there are 8 Platinum funds - see article for them - plus PMC and PTM, the management company, listed on ASX

I have noticed management has started a bit of a 'charm offensive' and getting out there selling the story. In all likelihood because they haven't been doing that well recently. The excuse has been that they are counter cyclical, and all the rest but....

http://www.moneymanagement.com.au/news/ ... of-success

...... A large proportion of purported active equity managers are, to some extent, closet indexers. This can be demonstrated by graphing the long-term returns of all equity trusts against their benchmark.

Many operate under controls that intentionally limit their index divergence. There can be sound business reasons for this. Once a manager has become widely supported on dealers’ and platforms’ Approved Product Lists, its highest priority may be to stay there — making the avoidance of underperformance more important than striving for outperformance.

However, my view is that such a product ought to be priced more like an index fund. Why should an investor pay, for example, 1 per cent (wholesale) or 2 per cent (retail) for a fund that does not try to meaningfully beat an index, when you can buy an index fund for almost nothing?

Long history teaches that superior investment skill is almost always individual rather than corporate. But skill alone is not enough. Star managers may be under pressure to take time to do marketing presentations, be impeded by a committee style decision-making process, or be constrained to manage risk in a way that hampers the full value of their skill.

For example, if the investment manager underperforms for a year or more by following its strategy, this can lead to complaints from advisers to business development managers (BDMs), flowing into pressure from the sales department on the investment team. If the chief executive officer (CEO) is focused on the next quarter’s earnings result, stemming outflow may be more important that maintaining the purity of the investment process.

Thus, two things are necessary for a manager to sustain superior returns: skill, and a structure that allows it to flourish.....