07 Oct 2020
Every month we study the universe of funds in the investment marketplace to assess whether they meet our exacting standards and should be given the RSMR seal of approval.
The ASI Europe Ex UK Small Companies Fund is managed by a highly experienced and successful team in this area who run both global and regional mandates. As with all team funds it utilises the proprietary Stock Matrix with an emphasis on quality growth companies. The team invest in positive ‘Focus on Change’ investment opportunities with an emphasis on high quality businesses that have a competitive advantage leading to consistent and sustainable earnings growth over time. The fund will always be heavily weighted to top scoring matrix stocks and is managed by team head Andrew Paisley utilising a process that has a proven track record.
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The Stewart Investors Asia Pacific Sustainability Fund is a multi cap fund investing in the Asia Pacific region excluding Japan. Companies held will earn a majority of revenue or profit from the region. It is managed by the sustainability team. The lead and deputy manager are located in Sydney and Singapore respectively, with these two areas now the main team hubs. As with all team funds, there is a similar philosophy regarding investing in quality with strong valuation disciplines, adopting an absolute return mindset with an emphasis on company stewardship. Investment decisions are made with a 5-year time horizon and the risk of losing money is considered more important than deviating from a benchmark.
Stocks being considered for the portfolio are put through a sustainability lens focussing on whether a stock or company has a positive or negative impact on society. Qualitative assessment of these factors is relied upon with no quantitative ethical screening. The team believe that companies with strong sustainability criteria will have tailwinds, while businesses with sustainability headwinds could see cash flows disappear quickly. This multi cap portfolio has delivered strong results over the long term that are even more impressive on a risk adjusted basis, taking volatility into account. David Gait and the team around him have delivered outstanding risk adjusted returns across a number of mandates in both Asia and Emerging Markets for many years.
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The Federated Hermes Global Emerging Markets Equity and SMID Equity funds are actively managed from the same high conviction strategy which has a blended growth and value style. The managers, Gary Greenberg and Kunjal Gala use both a top down country and sector analysis with in-depth fundamental bottom-up stock picking approach. This bottom-up approach is complemented by ESG analysis being fully integrated into the investment process, with inputs from the wider investment platform including over 30 ESG analysts from the Federated Hermes stewardship company EOS.
Click here to read the full profile for Global Emerging Markets Equity fund
Click here to read the full profile for Global Emerging Markets SMID Equity fund
The Janus Henderson Global Sustainable Equity fund is bottom-up in terms of composition and uses a sustainable investment process consisting of four pillars incorporating both positive and negative criteria.
Four overarching megatrends are used (resource constraints, climate change, populations growth and aging population) from which ten environmental and social development themes are developed to populate the portfolio. The environmental themes cover cleaner energy, sustainable transport, water management, environmental services and efficiency. The social themes cover health, sustainable property & finance, knowledge & technology and quality of life.
The fund is constructed to provide a highly differentiated global equity portfolio which has a style tilt towards growth and quality. Structural underweights will occur in the portfolio to the sectors that are avoided due the screen with regional exposure being a by-product of stock selection.
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Invesco Global Focus is a global equity fund, managed by the Invesco global equity team based in New York. The fund offers investors a concentrated portfolio of between 35-45 stocks which are selected through rigorous fundamental analysis. The team aim to invest in companies that will benefit from sustainable structural growth trends with attractive valuations.
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This information is for UK Professional Advisers only and should not be given to retail clients.The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amounts originally invested.
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