Global fund manager, Standard Life Investments, today announced the forthcoming launch (Thursday 19th January) of a Global Smaller Companies Fund which is to be jointly managed by its Head of Smaller Companies, Harry Nimmo and Alan Rowsell, Investment Director, Smaller Companies.
Alan recently joined the team having spent five years working as a US equity portfolio manager for Standard Life Investments in its Boston office.
The Fund seeks to capture the potentially substantial rewards offered by smaller company investing, with the added diversification benefits of access to a global opportunity set including both emerging and developed market coverage. It will draw on Standard Life Investments' established stock picking expertise which includes coverage of North America, Europe, the UK, Asia, Japan and Emerging Markets.
The objective of the Fund will be to provide capital growth over the longer term and to provide performance that is consistently above the average fund in its sector. It seeks to generate superior longer-term returns in excess of both smaller and larger company indices through a concentrated portfolio of 40 - 80 stocks. With a volatility rating of 7, the Fund will belong in the IMA Global Sector and be benchmarked against the MSCI All Country World Small Cap Index.
Ben Morris, Global Equity investment specialist at Standard Life Investments said, "An ever increasing number of investors are recognising the attraction of smaller company funds and the added opportunities and diversification offered by a global fund. Launching this fund is a natural extension to our strongly performing UK and European Smaller Companies Funds. Over the last three years, which have presented testing market conditions, our UK
Smaller Companies Fund has returned 92.78% against the IMA UK Smaller Companies sector average return of 81.82%*. During the same period, the European Smaller Companies SICAV has returned 75.13% outperforming its benchmark, the FTSE SmallCap Developed Europe, which returned 55.84%**.
"The exclusive skill set of our Smaller Companies team has been widely recognised over the last four years as the team has picked up a stream of industry awards. We consider this to be an extremely exciting opportunity for investors who will now be able to take advantage of our experienced and highly regarded smaller company and global equity teams."
Harry Nimmo, joint-manager of the new Global Smaller Companies Fund, said:
"While the economic and market outlook for 2012 is mixed, we are excited by the prospect that this may represent a well timed entry point for launching the Global Smaller Companies Fund. In the short term, the shadow of the Euro hangs over all asset classes and markets however the recent period of weakness is beginning to turn up high quality growth businesses at really quite modest valuations. The current levels of pessimism in markets
mean that negative scenarios are already being built into many share prices.
"Our focus will be on growth markets, business momentum, quality and predictability. Sectors featured may include those as diverse as high quality Indian regional banks, developing retail concepts that work well across the USA and have international potential, businesses that effectively harness the internet to reach customers and companies exposed to changing consumer patterns that come with increased urbanisation in China."
The Global Smaller Companies Fund is available pre-launch exclusively through Hargreaves Lansdown's Vantage platform with effect from 23rd December 2012. The Fund will be generally available for investment from its launch on 19th January 2012.
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