The new Crusaders sponsor that trades millions daily

A fixed income investment firm that trades up to A$400 million ($433m) in bonds every day will soon be seen on the red rugby uniform.

Coolabah Capital Investments, based in Sydney, has just shy of $10 billion in funds under management and has traded A$80b ($86.6b) in bonds so far this year.

It’s just signed on as a sponsor of the Crusaders Super Rugby team - signalling its push into the New Zealand market before it officially sets up shop in Auckland.

“We’re one of the fastest, most accurate, most successful bond traders on the planet and the Crusaders are unambiguously the most successful provincial rugby side on the planet,” Coolabah founder and chief investment officer Christopher Joye told the Herald’s Markets with Madison.

Coolabah Capital Investments has signed as a sponsor of the Crusaders Super Rugby team. Photo / photosport.nz

“New Zealand is a key part of our global expansion plan.

“We want to become a dominant player in the New Zealand fixed-income market.”

Joye said he had an affinity for the South Island specifically - his firm already sponsors New Zealand skier Alice Robinson.

Coolabah sponsors Australian-born, New Zealand-raised skier Alice Robinson. Photo / Photosport

Coolabah was experiencing decent demand from investors here. It had two New Zealand fixed-income funds and was expanding that to five.

“We’ve raised a lot of money in New Zealand and we are getting very good inflows.

“In our funds in New Zealand we’re yielding between 7.5 and 10.5 per cent depending on the product.”

Coolabah claimed to be digitising an analogue bond market that’s “literally like trading shares before exchanges existed in the 1950s,” Joye said.

It’s built 80 bond pricing models that 25 traders and quantitative analysts watched daily to find mispricings in the market in real time.

“What we do is intellectually very taxing.”

Coolabah Capital Investments founder and chief investment officer Christopher Joye.

Joye said for that reason it had no competition globally.

“It is an unusual situation where almost all the market is passive and we’re active.

“We’re trying to find cheap bonds that are paying too much interest.”

That type of operation saw it turnover up to 200 bonds in its portfolios as many as 20 times a year.

“We are not just a buy and hold fixed income investor, which is what the rest of the world mainly does.”

He commended New Zealand investors for their affinity for fixed income with a typically high concentration of bonds in their portfolios.

“New Zealanders are frankly a little bit smarter, more sophisticated and more risk-averse.

“It’s a culture of direct, fixed income participation.”

Joye planned to be in Christchurch next month to publicly sign the Crusaders deal.

Colin Mansbridge, Crusaders CEO, said it was thrilled to be partnering with Coolabah Capital for the next three years.

“It’s exciting to be aligned with such a fast-growing and innovative business.

“There will be some great opportunities to compare notes between high performance sport and business in order to generate learnings within the partnership.”

Madison Reidy is the host of New Zealand’s only financial markets show Markets with Madison. She joined the Herald in 2022 after working in investment, and has covered business and economics for television and radio broadcasters.