John Whelan, a veteran portfolio manager at Regal-owned PM Capital’s $4 billion Global Companies Fund, employs a distinctively contrarian investment strategy. While the broader market often chases popular growth stocks, Whelan consistently seeks value in overlooked and out-of-favour sectors, believing opportunity arises when others are fearful. PM Capital is a fund manager overseeing approximately $5 billion in total, with Whelan’s fund focusing on global equities, buying when market pessimism drives valuations down and divesting when euphoria pushes them too high.
Recently, Whelan has targeted the underperforming healthcare sector, accumulating positions in French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, Germany’s Siemens Healthineers, and US-based Royalty Pharma. He also sees opportunity in the beverage industry, investing in Diageo, Pernod Ricard, and Heineken, reasoning that market fears about declining alcohol consumption are overblown, especially given Heineken’s strong presence in emerging markets. Furthermore, he’s acquired shares in European aerospace giant Airbus, viewing rising fuel costs as a catalyst for new, more fuel-efficient aircraft demand, rather than a deterrent.
Whelan extends his approach to European banking, betting on market leaders like Spain’s CaixaBank and Britain’s Lloyds Banking Group, believing the era of zero-interest rates that stifled profitability has ended. He also holds alternative asset managers Apollo Global Management and KKR, seeing value mispriced by market fears surrounding private credit. Rather than directly investing in high-flying tech like Nvidia, Whelan prefers a “backdoor” play on the AI boom through copper miners such as Freeport-McMoRan. He has also taken short positions against highly valued Australian banks, including Commonwealth Bank and National Australia Bank, citing their stretched valuations. This patient, value-driven strategy has seen his fund deliver an 11.2 per cent annual return net of fees since its 1998 inception, outpacing the MSCI World Australian dollar benchmark’s 6.9 per cent.
