BNY Mellon Investment Management has launched the Dreyfus Japan Womenomics Fund, which is sub-advised by BNY Mellon Asset Management Japan Limited (BNYMAM Japan), an affiliate of the fund’s investment adviser, The Dreyfus Corporation (Dreyfus), BNY Mellon’s US Fund Platform.
The fund normally will invest in Japanese-listed companies that BNYMAM Japan believes will benefit from the Japanese Government’s “Womenomics” initiative, which seeks to enhance economic growth in Japan through improved gender parity in the workforce. The Womenomics initiative includes efforts to ease barriers to female employment outside the home, promote women to leadership positions, and close the gender pay gap. Recent government policies to support the initiative have included the labour reform law, expanding day care facilities, and a law requiring action plans from companies of a certain size to increase female employment.
“Dreyfus Japan Womenomics Fund is BNY Mellon’s first US thematic fund offering investors direct exposure to the improving Japanese economy,” says Alicia Levine (pictured), Chief Strategist, BNY Mellon Investment Management. “With the increase in investor demand for strategies tied to unleashing female potential and improved gender diversity, the Dreyfus Japan Womenomics Fund offers a solution for growth-seeking investors in one of the only nations with a sustained program in place to advance the economic opportunity of women in society.”
BNYMAM Japan will use an investment process that combines fundamental analysis and security valuation with the Womenomics growth theme. Using fundamental, bottom-up research with a mid- to long-term view, BNYMAM Japan will aim to select individual stocks that have growth potential, the ability to deliver long-term earnings above market expectations, and attractive valuations. BNYMAM Japan will invest in Japanese companies it believes will benefit from the Womenomics initiative, including those that actively hire and promote women, provide products or services, which target women, and benefit directly or indirectly from the economic potential of improved gender parity in the workforce.
The fund is managed by five members of the Japan Equity Investment Division at BNYMAM Japan; Makiko Togari, the Fund’s lead portfolio manager, Miyuki Kashima, Masafumi Oshiden, Kazuya Kurosawa, and Takashi Shimoyanagita. The Fund is not managed to a benchmark index, nor will the Fund’s portfolio have the same characteristics as its designated broad-based securities market index, TOPIX® Total Return Index, a market capitalisation-weighted index consisting of all stocks traded on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
“Using Womenomics as a filter, the fund seeks to offer investors dual exposure to a measurable secular growth theme and Japan’s economic recovery,” says Kashima. “The Fund’s investment criteria are derived from data we believe consistently demonstrate the escalating power of the female consumer as women become a larger percentage of the labor force and the outperformance of companies that employ and promote more women. The fund seeks to offer investors a differentiated way to access the Japanese market through an active, fundamental approach to isolate growth companies.”
