Good morning. I'm Tony Robinson, the Chair of Pacific Current Group and the Chair of this meeting. I'm delighted to welcome you to the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Pacific Current Group Limited. Thank you for your attendance today. The time is now 10:00 A.M., and we have a quorum of members present. I therefore declare the Annual General Meeting open. As this meeting is being held virtually with shareholders present in many locations, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the country on which we are each present, and recognizing their continuing connection to land, water, and culture. We pay our respects to our elders, to their elders, past, present, and emerging. Given the unprecedented nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and consistent with public health requirements, and as with our 2020 AGM, today's meeting will be conducted online.
We want to protect the health and safety of people while enabling shareholder engagement and participation. If we experience any technical issues today, a short recess or an adjournment may be required depending on the number of shareholders being affected. I'll let you know if this occurs. I'll now introduce your directors. Joining me today is Paul Greenwood, our Managing Director, CEO, and Chief Investment Officer, and our Non-Executive Directors, Jeremiah Chafkin, Melba Donnelly, Gilles Guérin, and Peter Kennedy. Melba Donnelly is Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee, and Peter Kennedy, Chair of the Remuneration, Nomination, and Governance Committee. I'd like to thank each director for their support during the year.
Others here today that make a tremendous contribution to our business are David Griswold, our General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer, Ashley Killick, our Chief Financial Officer, Trent Erickson, our Chief Operations Officer, and Clare Craven, our Company Secretary, who will also be our moderator today. Finally, I note that Jon Corbett of Deloitte is here, and Rita Da Silva of Ernst & Young have joined us as well. Deloitte were auditors for the 2021 financial year and we'll provide John with a chance to talk later. Rita Da Silva and Ernst & Young pick up the audit of Pacific Current from the 2022 financial year, subject to the resolution today. The agenda for today's meeting is set out on your screen.
Before commencing with the formal matters before the meeting today, I'll outline the formalities of the meeting and then hand over to Paul Greenwood, who will present an overview of activities during the 2021 financial year, commenting on strategy and providing an outlook for the business. A question and answer session about the financial statements, the audit, and general questions of management will be held before the resolutions are put to the vote of shareholders. Any shareholder or visitor who is listening to the webcast on the audio dial-in number will not be able to ask questions. Only shareholders participating online will be able to ask written and oral questions and also to vote on resolutions.
Lumi has advised that shareholders who wish to ask oral questions online should log in to the webcast via their internet browser rather than through a VPN connection to best access to this functionality. The notice of today's meeting was made available to all shareholders on our website, where you're able to find the minutes of the 2020 AGM, our constitution, and the 2021 annual report. I'll take the notice as read and deal with the business of the meeting in the order it appears in the notice. Before we do that, I'll explain how voting and questions will work for the meeting. Your board has determined that voting at the meeting will occur by way of a poll for all resolutions which require a vote. That you have enough time to vote, I'll open, I will shortly open voting, and it will stay open until the meeting closes.
As advised in the notice of the meeting, either the original facsimile or electronic transmission of the proxy forms and any power of attorney or authority under which they were signed must have been received at least 48 hours prior to the date of this meeting. That is no later than 10:00 A.M. Australian Eastern Daylight Time on Wednesday, the 17th of November, 2021. Any proxy form received after this deadline, including at the meeting, is invalid. Shareholders, corporate representatives, and proxy holders attending today will be able to cast their votes online in real time. If you wish to vote and you haven't yet logged in to the Lumi webcast and online voting platform, please follow the prompts to log in to the Lumi platform as set out in the notice of the meeting.
Once you've been admitted to the meeting voting site and the poll is declared open, a voting icon will appear on the screen, and the meeting resolution will be displayed. To vote, tap on one of the voting options, for, against, or abstain, and your response will be highlighted. To change your vote, press a different option to override your earlier response. There's no need to hit a Submit or enter button, as the vote is automatically recorded. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time I declare the voting is closed.
If you have any questions about casting your vote online, please refer to the online meeting guide that was issued with the notice of meeting or call Computershare on +61 3 9415 4024. As we formally put a resolution to the meeting, the proxies received in relation to that resolution will be shown on your screen. The number will include votes on undirected proxies cast by me as chair. As set out in the notice of meeting, as chair, I will vote all directed proxies in accordance with the directions provided by shareholders and all undirected proxies, I will vote in favor of all resolutions. Today, we've appointed Tim Heun of Computershare, the company share registry, as the returning officer.
After the votes have been counted and reviewed by the returning officer, the results of the meeting will be released to the ASX and available on your website. I now declare voting open on all items of business. You can now submit your online votes at any time. In relation to questions and comments, general business will be taken for item one, and questions relevant to each other item of business will be answered following my introduction to that item. Only shareholders may ask questions, and I reserve the right as chair to rule questions as not pertaining to the AGM out of order. There are two ways by which questions can be asked, either by typing a question into the platform or by using the platform to ask your questions verbally. Online attendees can submit questions at any time.
To ask a written question, please tap on the question icon, type your question in the chat box at the top of the screen, and select the send icon. Please note that while you can submit questions from now, they will not be addressed until the relevant time in the meeting. Please also note that your question may be moderated or if we receive multiple questions on one topic, amalgamated together. For those shareholders who wish to ask a verbal question, an audio question facility is available during this meeting. To use this service, please pause the broadcast on the Lumi platform and then click on the link under the Asking Audio Questions. A new page will open, where you will be prompted to enter your name and the topic of your question before being connected. You'll listen to the meeting on this page while waiting to ask your question.
If you have any issues using this system, please return to the Lumi platform. We ask that you keep your question short and to the point so that as many shareholders as possible have the chance to ask a question. The moderator will identify each person who asks the questions, read out the question, and then pass the question to me as chair, and I'll either answer the question or pass it to the most appropriate person to respond. Where we have a verbal question, the moderator will introduce the shareholder who can then ask their question. We reserve the right to rule out questions that do not relate to the business of the meeting. We will also not answer questions that are the same or substantially similar to questions that have already been answered.
Otherwise, we'll endeavor to answer questions, provide answers to as many questions as we can. I'm now gonna hand over to Paul Greenwood, to present the business overview. Paul, over to you.
Thank you, Tony. I'd also like to thank the board, Pacific Current employees and shareholders for joining us today. We are excited to update you on the progress our company continues to make, as well as share some thoughts about what the future holds for us. Today we're gonna cover a lot of material, and so we will move through the financial information pretty quickly because most of that information was disclosed in our year-end results. We're gonna start on page 12, but if you're looking at the ASX release we did in the last few minutes, that's page three. We have it numbered a little differently for the actual meeting here.
Starting on page 12, we simply offer a reminder of what our business is all about. It's, in a sense, what we do is quite simple. We purchase stakes, minority stakes, typically in investment management companies, and we receive a share of their revenues or profits. If we do our job well, we'll be investing in companies that are likely to produce good performance. It's no surprise that good performance tends to lead to increase in funds under management and increase in revenues. The more the investment companies that we invest in grow their funds under management, the better they do and the better we do. From an investment perspective, our managers did well in FY 2021. Though this was primarily a function of our private capital managers performing well.
Our long-only equity managers didn't fare well from a pure investment performance perspective. Funds under management grew dramatically last year, grew 52%, aggregate FUM. If you actually look in U.S. dollars, which is sort of more appropriate since most of the managers are U.S.-based, funds under management grew 66%. As of September, we actually hit 150 billion aggregate assets under management. Now the reason for this hyper-growth over the last few years is really a function largely of what's gone on with GQG Partners. Last year alone, GQG grew from $44 billion- $85 billion U.S. of assets under management.
However, aside from GQG, the rest of the portfolio also posted solid growth, with some increasing 9% for those managers last year. Actually, if you look in local currency, that was actually 19%. Even in the last quarter, the quarter ending 30 September, we saw the non-GQG managers grow their fund an additional 7%. The growth has been broad indeed. In terms of financial performance, we saw currency play a big role in our results last year. For instance, our NPAT, our underlying NPAT grew 5%, but in U.S. dollars, it actually grew 17%. We saw our revenues from management fees, which is by far the largest component of our revenue stream, grow 10% last year.
Once again, in U.S. dollars, that's actually 23%. A really strong growth in management fee revenues. Our expenses declined significantly last year. That's really a function of two things. One is the reduction in commission expenses, and the other is a reduction in travel and entertainment as a lot of our activity and we were grounded by COVID and travel restrictions. If you move on to page 13 in the presentation, you'll see details of the financial results in both Australian dollars and U.S. dollars. Given that more than 90% of our revenues are in U.S. dollars, we believe the best way to understand the fundamental performance of the business is by viewing it through a U.S. dollar lens. As I noted, we saw substantial growth in management fee revenues from our portfolio companies.
We also saw a large decline in performance fees and commission revenues. The decline in performance fees was largely related to environmental reasons, such as our boutiques not being able to or not inclined to sell assets during the middle of the COVID pandemic because they thought doing so, they wouldn't attract the prices they wanted. Over time, we expect larger performance fees from our managers than we received last year. Moving on to page 14. Page 14 is really a repeat from our FY 21 results presentation. The point of this is just to highlight the solid growth in management fee revenues and the profitability of our business if you strip out all of the performance fees and commission revenues.
What I think of sort of the organic profitability of the business. You see that continues to grow very nicely. Page 16 of the presentation provides an overview of our current portfolio. We have broken this out by tier one and tier two, and by the economic structure of our investment in those companies. As a reminder, tier one holdings are those that are intended to be the largest contributors or expected to be the largest contributors over time. Also as a reminder, the reason we use a sort of a broad array of economic structures in our investments is to better manage the risk-return profile of each investment, while also maximizing the opportunity set of the investments we're able to select from.
Moving on to page 17 is really a reminder of some of the portfolio's recent highlights. I won't dwell on all of these right now, but I will note that GQG and Victory Park have been the most dynamic situations recently. We'll touch more on GQG in a minute, but I'll say a couple of things about Victory Park. It was an investment that initially didn't get off to as fast a start as we would have hoped. However, in FY 2021, the firm really started to gain traction and hit its stride. It launched four SPACs, which are special purpose acquisition companies, and has seen its fund growth accelerate significantly recently. We expect this more rapid fund growth to actually continue for an extended period of time.
Turning to page 18, really sort of highlights the big recent news. I'm sure most people acquainted with our business are aware of this, which is the IPO of GQG Partners. We thought a brief recap of this investment would be constructive. To begin with, we spent years trying to get ourselves in a position to back Rajiv Jain should he ever want to start his own firm. We then engaged with him to start the company, build out its operations, while also helping them raise capital into their investment strategies. At the time of GQG's IPO, PAC had already made 11 times our initial investment from the distributions we had received.
The proceeds we received from the IPO represented another 16 times our initial investment, leaving us with a terminal stake that is worth around 65 times our initial investment, if you assume an AUD 2 share price at GQG. We continue to be very excited about the future of GQG, in part because we now own a different security. We own the common stock, which will allow us to participate more fully in the firm's future growth. Just to preempt any questions on the subject, with regard to what we plan on doing with our stake in GQG. I've described it as we will be ruthlessly pragmatic. We're obviously bullish on the business, but we will manage that position.
When the escrow is up, we will manage our position based on our outlook for GQG, the availability of other attractive investment options and position size considerations for PAC. Obviously, GQG has been an extreme outlier, and no one should expect these sort of returns on any investment. That said, there are some lessons from this experience that we can take away and that I think are really important. The first is we need to always be planting these sort of seeds that could lead to future investments because sometimes they take years to germinate. This is what our investment team spends you know, the majority of its time doing. Second is being flexible in how you partner with companies is essential. There are a lot of firms that do
Notionally do what we do that has sort of a one-size-fits-all template with regard to how they partner. They say, "We need to own X% of a company and otherwise there's no deal." We actually sort of take the opposite view. If you wanted to own 40% of GQG when it started, you would have had an option of owning zero. That would have been the only thing because 40% wasn't on the table. The third point is quality matters. It's better to pay a premium to back world-class investors than to pay less to back a lower quality organization. Moving on to page 19, it's just a quick snapshot on performance. The performance of our managers has been good on average.
Over the last year, it's been particularly good for our private capital strategies, weaker for the long-only managers. The longer three- and five-year numbers and beyond for our long-only managers looks very competitive. I also think that you'll see long-only manager results look a little stronger December thirty-first based on how they're tracking more recently. At this point, we believe all our managers have performance that I would regard as sellable, so you know, such that one could raise additional capital. Those competitive long-term results, you know, at the end of the day in our business, having competitive long-term results is all you can hope for in terms of being able to raise future capital.
Moving on to page 20, this shows the breadth of growth across our portfolios since June of 2018. Obviously, GQG is an outlier on there, but you see that the growth has been generally quite broad and that continues, I would think, on a go-forward basis. On page 22, we really just put this in as a reminder of really the four tenets of our underlying investment philosophy, which is we're looking for quality, sustainable growth, alignment, and risk mitigation.
There's a lot that goes into each of these, and I won't bore everyone with those now, but I'm happy to answer questions around how we think about each of those components, if you should be interested. Moving on to page 23 and 24, we really describe the two types of investment we make. If you've been watching our company, you will have seen us make these types of investments. The first are the larger, what we term growth equity investments. Those are firms like Aperio, Carlyle, Victory Park, Pennybacker, Proterra. And those are businesses that are growing, but profitable and a little more mature, but not on the decline.
Then the other type of investments we make are these early-stage investments. Those are like GQG, CAMG, and Astarte. The reason we focus on both types is that ultimately we're trying to build a portfolio and that we want that portfolio characterized by the resilience that growth equity type investment. Moving on to page 26, we really highlight some of the current market trends that are informing how we look at the world and a lot of our activities. The first one is, and this is one that we certainly would have touched on in the past, but we believe traditional active managers will continue to feel pressure, particularly if they have domestically focused strategies. This is true in the U.S., it's true in Australia.
This trend's been going on for a long time in the U.S., but it seems to be accelerating probably more rapidly now in Australia as super funds take in-house strategies that they once outsourced. We think this will put downward pressure on manager pricing, particularly in institutional channels. To us, this means if you're going to invest in active equity managers, you must be, one, highly selective, and two, you need to invest in firms offering products with global appeal. That's why, you know, GQG offers things like, you know, global equities, emerging markets, that sort of thing. Lastly, you need managers with attractive pricing strategies.
I think many of a lot of legacy sort of oriented firms are going to feel a lot of pricing pressure on their current strategies. Next trend I would highlight is what we call the democratization of alternative assets. This is an area we are seeing a lot of innovation in. Basically, the challenge here is how do you provide sophisticated alternative products, oftentimes illiquid, like private equity and private debt to retail investors. This is resulting in a lot of intriguing opportunities that we're looking at and trying to sort through at the moment, but this is going to be a, I think, a major trend globally. The next one is what I call evolving business models.
you know, if you think about the investment management business, it hasn't evolved much in recent decades, but that's changing. We are intrigued by some of the new models that offer clients a more attractive investment proposition. I would classify our recent investment in Astarte as an example of a firm with a new type of business model. I think you'll see that some of our future investments have distinctive business models, as well. Next trend, emerging asset classes. Within broad asset classes, there are always emerging sort of subsegments that are intriguing and are less competitive. We would rather invest in these emerging segments than the hypercompetitive ones. One investment, our investment in Carlyle is actually a good example, of sort of a less competitive segment of the market, which is life settlements.
Some of the other examples that we have in mind are ones we actually prefer to keep quiet for competitive reasons, but that are ones that we're focused on. The last thing I'd mention about industry trends is asset managers have become a hot commodity right now, particularly ones in the private capital space. We are certainly seeing this in the pricing at which investments get done. Our strategy to combat this is one, increase the proprietary idea generation. Two, not to pay, we're not gonna pay more for our investments. And three, we're gonna focus more on targeting special situations where there's some reasons that other folks might struggle to underwrite those investments. We still are very confident we can deploy capital without relaxing our valuation parameters.
We're gonna move on to page 27 and 28. These discuss the impact of the GQG listing on our financial results. These bullet points are pretty dense, but I'll try to succinctly summarize them. The first is, our company no longer owns a preferred security in GQG. Going forward, our earnings will come from the dividends we receive on our 4% stake in GQG. For FY 2022, we will receive earnings based on our old security up until October 26th. Beyond that, we'll receive dividends from the new common equity. We are currently working through the accounting treatment of all of this right now. That is, if we can accrue the declared dividends that GQG intends to make for the period that those dividends relate to, then we won't have any issues with regard to reported earnings.
If we can't accrue declared dividends and have to recognize them in the period they are received, then for the period ending June, we will actually miss out on three months of reported earnings from GQG during FY 2022. That would, we'd miss out on two months in the first half of the year and one month in the second half. Based on the estimates GQG has provided in its prospectus, that would come to about $3.2 million. It's important to note, though, that regardless of the accounting treatment, we will actually be receiving cash sooner than we would have under the old security. If there is an issue, and we're not sure there is. We still are very confident we can deploy capital without relaxing our valuation parameters.
We're gonna move on to page 27 and 28. These discuss the impact of the GQG listing on our financial results. These bullet points are pretty dense, but I'll try to succinctly summarize them. The first is, our company no longer owns a preferred security in GQG. Going forward, our earnings will come from the dividends we receive on our 4% stake in GQG. For FY 2022, we will receive earnings based on our old security up until October 26. Beyond that, we'll receive dividends from the new common equity. We are currently working through the accounting treatment of all of this right now. i.e., if we can accrue the declared dividends that GQG intends to make for the period that those dividends relate to, then we won't have any issues with regard to reported earnings.
If we can't accrue declared dividends and have to recognize them in the period they are received, then for the period ending June, we will actually miss out on three months of reported earnings from GQG during FY 2022. That would, we'd miss out on two months in the first half of the year and one month in the second half. Based on the estimates GQG has provided in its prospectus, that would come to about $3.2 million. It's important to note, though, that regardless of the accounting treatment. We will actually be receiving cash sooner than we would have under the old security. If there is an issue, and we're not sure there is, it is only an FY 2022 reporting issue, and it has nothing to do with cash.
At the end of the day, cash is king, as they say. In all scenarios, beyond FY 2022, every six-month reporting period would include six months of earnings from GQG. Also then historically, the structure of our security in GQG skewed results toward the second half of the fiscal year. Going forward, results won't be skewed toward the second half of the fiscal year because that security has gone away. Rather, results will be more skewed toward the first half of the fiscal year, the period we're in right now. In part, they'll be largely skewed toward this half because on December 31st is when a lot of performance fees crystallize for some of our managers.
Going to page 29, we'll just briefly discuss some of the outlook or our outlook for the business. We expect broad growth across our boutiques. At the year-end results, we forecasted that our managers, exclusive of GQG, which has grown so rapidly that it's hard to talk about them in the context of the rest of the portfolio. The non-GQG managers we forecasted would receive somewhere between AUD 3 billion and AUD 8 billion of new cash flows or new allocations over the next 18 to 24 months. In the first quarter of this year, ending September 30, they received about AUD 780 million, so well on their way. This quarter, obviously, it's not over, but we're forecasting they will the non-GQG managers will receive roughly another AUD 1 billion of commitments.
Thus, you know, by the end of this quarter, hopefully, we're AUD 1.7 billion on our way to that target. In fact, going forward, we have pretty good visibility for the rest of the fiscal year. I'd not be surprised at all if we actually hit that AUD 3 billion number later in the fiscal year. Note that there can be a little lag between commitments of funds under management and revenues, so some of the commitments we expect in the second half of the year may not translate into meaningful revenue during the second half, but obviously bode well for revenues beyond that period. The market for investment managers is very hot, and I mentioned this earlier.
We've learned from experience that if we sell our stake in a nicely growing manager, it tends to be at values that are far above the values we carry them on our balance sheet. This doesn't mean we will end up selling more assets, but I think it's important to know if we do sell assets, we believe we can redeploy that capital in a way that continues to increase our revenues and profits. We can, if forced to sell, we think we can ultimately add value fairly quickly once that capital is redeployed.
Then I guess the last thing I'd say is in FY 2022, if we expect our revenues to grow even if we don't redeploy any capital, and we do have a lot of capital on hand now with the proceeds of GQG. Even if we don't recognize all of those GQG earnings. Obviously, if we could recognize that and redeploy capital, then you should see significant growth. Lastly, I'm gonna go to page 30. I'd like to take a minute and offer some thoughts on PAC's valuation. Once again, this slide's a little dense, so it might take some time to digest it. But if you look at PAC's market capitalization, and this was the slide we've done about two days ago, I think, after November 17th.
If you look at our market capitalization and back out the value of GQG shares, which are marked in the market every day, you can get an inferred value for the rest of our business. We did this as of November seventeenth, and the market cap ex GQG was AUD 158 million. Now, if you then back out GQG's earnings contributions from last year, you can estimate what the PE of our business is ex GQG. When you do that math, you come to a PE of 9.7. That may strike people as fairly low based on the growth I just described and the progress we're making in terms of the inflows into the non-GQG managers.
It's also interesting to note that our market cap, as of November 17, had increased about AUD 53 million from the point the news of GQG broke, even though the estimated change in book value from this development is AUD 122 million. PAC estimates that its current book value is around AUD 10.46 a share. Lastly, one other way to look at this is that 158 million of inferred market cap ex GQG has an estimated AUD 313 million of book value supporting it. Additionally, there's another AUD 24 million of value reflected in our fair value estimates that are not reflected in that AUD 313 million of book value. That's all my prepared comments.
I'll close by noting that our company is full of incredibly talented and the highly devoted group of people who have worked very hard to get the company where it is. They certainly deserve a much more praise and recognition than they receive. I know they share my gratitude to our shareholders, but also my bullishness on the business and excitement for what's to come. With that, I will hand it back over to Tony.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Paul. A wonderful summary of the business and the strategy and the outlook. I think hopefully a great help to shareholders. We now come to the formal business of the meeting. The resolutions one to six, as set out in the notice of the meeting, are each to be considered as an ordinary resolution and must be approved by a simple majority of the votes cast by shareholders entitled to vote. The first item of business is the receipt and consideration of the 2021 annual report of Pacific Current Group. There is no resolution to be considered by shareholders. The 2021 annual report contains the financial report, directors' report, and independent auditor's report.
A copy of the 2021 annual report was made available on the company's website, the ASX platform, and was sent to those shareholders who requested a copy. The financial statement has been approved by the directors and audited by Deloitte. I'll take the 2021 annual report as read. Questions may also be asked of the auditors in relation to the conduct of the audit, the preparation and content of the audit report, the accounting policies adopted by the company, and the independence of the auditor. At this time, I'd like to take any general questions or comments about the 2021 annual report or the auditor. Or for the auditor. No questions for the auditors have been received prior to the meeting. I note that we have received one question from a shareholder before the meeting, and I'll read it out and answer the question now.
The question was, "Having Paul Greenwood chair the remuneration is a conflict of interest given that he is a direct beneficiary of their decisions. How can this be better managed in the future?" I can confirm that the chair of the PAC's Remuneration, Nomination and Governance Committee is Peter Kennedy, an independent non-executive director. Paul Greenwood has never been the chair of that committee and is in fact not even a member of that committee. That concludes the general questions received prior to the meeting. Are there any comments or questions on this item from shareholders attending online? Please click on the Answer a Question button, type your question and press the send arrow, or alternatively, follow the steps to ask your questions verbally. Moderator, please read any questions received or allow telephone questions to be answered.
Chair, we have a question from Melanie Rickson. The financial statements of the company disclose the net asset value of its shares to be AUD 7.92 and are currently trading at discount at AUD 7.39. Is the company perceived to be an acquisition target? Has the company received offers to be acquired? How have management and the board responded? Does a committee of outside directors independently consider takeover proposals? Since the company's Managing Director was appointed as its Chief Investment Officer, the value of the company's shares have fallen by 36% or 6.3% per annum over a period of some seven years. Given the company's poor share price performance as presided over by the managing director over many years, is it now not time to bring in fresh blood to lead the company? If not, why not? Has the company considered selling itself to extract better value for shareholders?
Well, Melanie, there's a lot of questions in all of that, and I'll try to answer them all. The net asset value of the business is actually now, we believe, significantly above the AUD 7.92 that you're talking at. The discount, you know, current trading price, is even more significant than you're suggesting. Certainly we're, you know, we think that, you know, that discount, you know, we hope it'll be closed, but we also think that it should be something that, you know, interested parties should look at and recognize, you know, provides them potentially with a good opportunity to buy shares. Are we perceived as an acquisition target as a consequence?
You know, that's really hard to judge, you know, as the party that might be acquired in that situation. Certainly, whenever you trade at a discount to what we see as, you know, a better representation of fair value of the business, you've got to be vulnerable to takeover activity. In terms of the question about Paul. Paul is actually Chief Investment Officer and stepped up to become Managing Director and CEO in those roles as well. Clearly he does, you know, a fantastic job. No better illustration of that than the returns out of GQG, but it's not just in the returns for GQG that you can see that.
You can see it in the growing net asset value position of the business and the funds flows that are coming into the boutiques that we, you know, have stakes in. You know, it's been a tremendously successful allocation of capital, you know, in the period that he's been both Chief Investment Officer and Managing Director and CEO. We certainly appreciate him in that role. You know, there's a recognition of the importance of him to our business in one of the resolutions coming up, where we're looking to provide him with a long-term incentive program that we hope encourages him to stay with us for a long period of time. Would we consider, you know, selling?
We're certainly always open to people approaching the business. As I said, we know that, given there is a discount to fair value, that we're already or always in a situation where there's a prospect or a greater prospect of someone approaching us than there would be if that you know if that gap between trading price and fair value was less. Now, Melanie, I hope that answers those questions. Clare, are there any other questions?
Yes, Chair. I have a question from Mrs. Christine Anne Shaw. The question is: Victory Park Capital retained a large part of earnings last year. Why was this, and why do you think this will continue this financial year, excluding SPAC contribution?
Again, thank you very much for the question. I'll pass that one to Paul or to Ashley to answer that. Paul, Ashley, which one would be best to give a comment on that?
Yeah, it is probably me, Tony. Yes, they did retain a fair amount of earnings last year. Largely that was because they had some opportunities to get exposure to some of this, the SPAC opportunities related to the SPACs that they have sponsored. That has proven to be sort of a wise decision for them. They have become one of the premier leaders in the SPAC space and we are, you know, very comfortable with that retention because of the use of the proceeds there.
If I can just add?
Yes.
We typically receive a good proportion of the earnings in cash distributions. I'm just making the point that the declaration or the disclosure that we make in the annual report for associates and that the earnings stream that's disclosed is for 100% of Victory Park in this case, while we only own 24.9%. The amount that's shown as earnings attributable to Victory Park in that note is for 100%, as opposed to the 24.9% of the contract.
Thank you. Thank you very much, Ashley and Paul. Clare, are there any other questions?
Yes, Chair. I have a question from Melanie Rixon. The question is: Do the current members of the board have the qualifications, experience, and strategic mindset to help guide the company into the future? What skills and attributes does the board need in its members? Why aren't long-tenured board members stepping down so new board members may be brought in?
Melanie, that's a lovely question. Thank you, Melanie, because it provides me with a chance to talk about the skills and capabilities of the board. They really are, you know, very well qualified for their role, and there's no simpler illustration of that than the list of achievements and experiences that we'll talk about with Gerry when his the resolution to reappoint him comes up. All of the individuals have extensive experience in, you know, asset management and investing. That's true for each of those board members, Mel, Gerry, Gilles, and Peter. The great joy of this board is that it's a global experience set. You know, Gerry is based in the U.S. and operated in the U.S. market.
Gilles is based in Europe and operated you know again in this market for a considerable period of time. Gilles has been investing in boutiques for you know a very significant number of years. Yeah a very strong base. Peter, a business. The dividend flows and the payments we receive from our holdings, the recurring payments we receive from the holdings you know from our investments in our boutiques, that's the core or the basis for the dividends. Again just repeating that the capital we recycle and the earnings we pay out you know a significant portion of those as dividends. No intention to change that approach. Clare, any other questions from shareholders?
Yes, Chair. I have a question from Alexander Capital Investment Pty. Ltd. The question is: Hi, Tony. Slide 21 of the presentation and your comments today suggests that PAC is considerably undervalued. Given PAC's surplus cash position, would it not be prudent for the board to undertake a buyback or some other material form of capital management?
Thank you to the question. Again, it's a great question. I can tell you the board thinks about all of these things constantly. You know, we're very aware that we trade at a you know, at a discount and what's the best way to close that gap. You know, we've obviously had a significant share price increase you know, over the last 12 months, and we think that's sort of hoping that's an indication of growing interest and therefore, you know, that the gap is going to close. I can tell you that all of the sort of issues of capital management you know, are looked at.
Even in terms of, you know, raising capital, you know, we're always thinking about, you know, what's in the best interest of shareholders and is an appropriate thing to do given the sort of discount. At this stage, no intention to do a buyback.
Hey, Tony. It might be worth it. I'll elaborate that, you know, one of the challenges inherent in our business model is that when we're constrained in our ability to repurchase our equity most of the time. For example, the GQG IPO, our legal advice would not allow us to repurchase, do a stock buyback during that period because it would be done with inside information. Because our business is transactional and these transactions have many months of lead time, it is the norm that we are involved in some sort of discussion or one of our portfolio companies that would preclude us from doing that.
So don't, I would not interpret the lack of repurchasing, doing a stock buyback as a statement we don't believe the stock's cheap or due. It's rather we are constantly encumbered because even if one of our companies is about to sell, like GQG or other ones in the past, or we're about to make a large investment, we just can't act on that.
Again, thank you for that, question, Clare. Any other questions from shareholders?
There's one final question, Chair. The question is: If the say on pay vote fails, what steps does the board plan to take to ensure proper passage next year?
Thank you for the question, although I am slightly confused by it. I'm not sure the pay vote meaning the, you know, the remuneration report or the resolution related to part of Paul's remuneration, which is obviously, you know, the pay to Paul. I'll try and, you know, address sort of both of those. The remuneration report will be disappointed if it's not supported by shareholders. We're very prudent about, you know, about the remuneration in the organization.
It's a complex issue investing in this marketplace, and we've got an outstanding team of executives and finding the right balance to keep them fairly remunerated and therefore, you know, committed to the business and aligned to the, you know, to the business and the interest of the shareholders is something we spend a lot of time thinking about. We think we explain that well in the Remuneration Report. Certainly aren't anticipating any challenges in getting shareholders to support that resolution. On Paul's LTI, long-term incentive, that's in there, the same. We believe that it's appropriate, given the various hats that Paul, you know, Paul wears, Vice Managing Director and CEO and Chief Investment Officer, and does an outstanding job in all of those. We're not anticipating any problems with getting shareholder support for those. No, I hope that answers those questions. Clare, any other question?
Yes, Chair. There's another question that's just come through from Melanie Rickson. The question is, "How many of PAC employees own shares in the company?
Not sure of the answer to that one. Clare, I mean, certainly from my point of view, I would have liked to have owned more shares in the company. But as Paul points out, the windows where we can purchase shares is really limited, and that'll apply to employees as well. You know, we're all privy to what's happening inside the business so the windows to acquire shares are fleeting. So it's. There's not great opportunities for them to acquire shares, you know, on the market. So it's certainly I know that all of the board own shares and would all like to have had the opportunity to acquire more.
You know, I'm not sure I can provide much more detail on that, Melanie. I hope that's helpful, though. Clare, any other questions?
Chair, no, we have no further questions at this time.
All right. Well, as there are no more questions, we'll now move on to the next item of the business. That is Resolution 1. The first resolution of the meeting is the adoption of the remuneration report. Resolution one is an advisory resolution, does not bind the directors or the company. The remuneration report was contained within the 2021 annual report, is available on the company's website and was posted to shareholders upon request. I'll take the remuneration report as read. Further details about the resolution are also contained in the explanatory memorandum to the notice of meeting. The resolution is set out on your screen.
Before putting resolution one to the meeting, I'd like to advise shareholders that the company will disregard any votes, as stated in the voting exclusion statement related to resolution one, as set out in the notice of meeting. The directors abstained in the interest of good governance from making a recommendation in relation to resolution one. Are there any comments or questions on this item from shareholders attending online? Clare, please read any written questions received or allow verbal questions to be asked.
Chairman, there are no questions on this resolution at this time.
Thank you. As there are no questions on this item, I'll put this resolution to the meeting. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. Please now select for, against, or abstain for resolution one. Resolution two. Resolution two is the re-election of Jeremiah Chafkin as a director. Resolution two is an ordinary resolution requiring simple vote, a simple majority of votes cast by shareholders present and entitled to vote on the resolution. Jeremiah Chafkin retires in accordance with the company's constitution and being eligible offers himself for election as a non-executive director of Pacific Current Group.
I hope the following also builds on the description I gave about the capability of the board and I, y ou know, Jerry is enormously qualified to provide us support and assistance at the board and does that and provides enormous support and assistance to the executives. Jerry is Vice Chairman of Investment at AssetMark Financial Holdings, Inc., where he is responsible for oversight of the company's investment solutions framework and providing investment perspectives to investment advisors and their clients. He joined AssetMark in 2014, bringing to them over 25 years of financial services leadership. Previously, Jerry was CEO of AlphaSimplex Group, a liquid alternatives and asset volatility management specialist in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to that, he was CEO at IXIS Asset Management in Boston, has spent nearly a decade at Charles Schwab in a range of leadership roles, including CEO of the asset management division.
Jeremiah began his career at Bankers Trust Company, where he spent almost 15 years in a variety of asset management roles, working with institutional clients in the U.S.A. and abroad. At the time of his departure from Bankers Trust, he was the CEO of its structured investment management business with more than $250 billion in assets under management in fixed income, quantitative equity and asset allocation strategies. Further information in relation to Jeremiah's background and experience is in the notice of the meeting. The resolution is set out on your screen. The directors, with Jeremiah abstaining, recommend that shareholders vote in favor of the re-election of Jeremiah Chafkin as a director of Pacific Current Group. Are there any questions or comments, Clare?
Chairman, there are no questions for this resolution at this time.
If there are no more questions, I'll now put resolution two to the meeting. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. Please now select either for, against, or abstain for resolution two. Resolution three is an approval to issue securities under the employee share ownership plan. The next resolution of the meeting is the approval to issue those shares. The board believes that the interest of Pacific Current's personnel should be aligned to the long-term interests of shareholders, and that Pacific Current employees should have maximum flexibility to allow them the opportunity to obtain equity interest in the company. We've commented on this in the questions section. Further information about this resolution is available in the notice of meeting. The resolution is set out on your screen.
Resolution three is an ordinary resolution requiring a simple majority of votes cast by shareholders present and entitled to vote on the resolutions. Before putting resolution three to the meeting, I'd like to advise shareholders that the company will disregard any votes, as stated in the voting exclusion statement related to resolution three, as set out in the notice of meeting. The directors, with Mr. Greenwood abstaining, recommend shareholders vote in favor of resolution three. Clare, are there any questions or comments?
Chair, we have no questions or comments for this resolution.
Thank you, Clare. I therefore put this resolution to the meeting. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. Please select now for, against, or abstain for Resolution three. The next resolution is the approval of securities, the issue of securities to Paul Greenwood. The next resolution of the meeting is to consider and if thought fit to approve the issue of 1.8 million options to Paul Greenwood in his role as Managing Director, Chief Investment Officer, and Chief Executive Officer under the company's employee share ownership plan as part of his remuneration on the terms summarized in the notice of meeting. The resolution is set out on your screen. Resolution four is an ordinary resolution requiring a simple majority of votes cast by shareholders present and entitled to vote on the resolution.
Before putting resolution four to the meeting, I'd like to advise shareholders that the company will disregard any votes, as stated in the voting exclusion statement related to resolution four, as set out in the notice of meeting. The directors, with Mr. Paul Greenwood abstaining, recommend you vote in favor of this resolution. Are there any questions or comments, Clare?
Yeah, we have no questions or comments for this resolution.
Thank you. I now therefore put the resolution four to the meeting. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. Please select either for, against, or abstain for Resolution four. The next resolution of the meeting is to consider and if thought fit to approve the benefits to Mr. Paul Greenwood on the cessation of his employment or the transfer of undertaking or property of the group. There are restrictions, you know, under the Corporations Act related to remuneration for executives. Section 200B of that act prohibits the company from providing a benefit to an employee in a managerial or executive office in connection with his or her retirement from or other cessation of office without shareholder approval under Section 200E.
Similarly, Section 200C of that act prohibits the company from providing a benefit to an employee in a managerial or executive office in connection with the transfer of the whole or any part of the undertakings or property of the company. Accordingly, shareholder approval is being sought to allow the early vesting of the options that are subject to Resolution four or a payment to Mr. Greenwood of the value of some or all of those options in those circumstances. The resolution is set out on your screen. Resolution five is an ordinary resolution requiring a simple majority of votes cast by shareholders present and entitled to vote on the resolution.
Before putting Resolution five to the meeting, I'd like to advise shareholders that the company will disregard any votes, as stated in the voting exclusion statement related to resolution five, as set out in the notice of meeting. The directors, with Mr. Paul Greenwood abstaining, recommend you vote in favor of resolution five. Clare, are there any questions?
Chair, there are no questions or comments in relation to this resolution.
As there are no questions, I'll now put Resolution five to the meeting. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. Please now select either for, against, or abstain for resolution five. The final resolution of the meeting is to consider and if thought appropriate, to approve the appointment of Ernst & Young as the company's auditor. The current auditor, Deloitte, have agreed to resign at the AGM. We've now received the appropriate consents from ASIC to the resignation. In accordance with Section 328B(1) of the Corporations Act, notice in writing nominating Ernst & Young as an auditor that has been given to the company. A copy of this notice is contained in attachment A of the notice of meeting.
Ernst & Young have consented to the appointment under Section 328A(1) of that act. ASIC, as I said, have confirmed their consent to the resignation of Deloitte. I'd like to just acknowledge Deloitte and particularly Jon Corbett who have done a fantastic job for us. Jon's been a wonderful support to the company and to the board, and has always made a significant contribution while maintaining his independence. Thank you, Jon, and thank you for being here today. The resolution is set out on your screen. Resolution six is an ordinary resolution requiring a simple majority of votes cast by shareholders present and entitled to vote on the resolution. The directors unanimously recommend shareholders vote in favor of Resolution six. Clare, are there any questions?
Chair? No, there are no questions for this resolution.
As there are no questions, I'll now put Resolution six to the meeting. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are shown on the screen. Please now select for, against, or abstain for Resolution six. That concludes the formal business for today's meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, that also concludes the voting of the resolution because I will now close the poll. The voting system will close at the end of the meeting. Once voting has been closed, all votes will be final and cannot be changed. Could you please check that you have cast your votes on all resolution before you log out of the meeting. Clare, is there anything else we need to do in regards to closing the voting out?
No, Chairman. That's all. You can close the meeting now.
Thank you. That concludes the business as set out in the notice of meeting. On behalf of the board, I'd like to thank you for your support, attendance, and participation today. Poll takes some time to count to obtain the final result. As advised earlier, after the votes have been counted, the results of the poll will be released to the ASX as soon as possible. I now declare the meeting closed. Thank you.