BGF Asian Dragon A2 (GBP) |
by Samuel Lo
Our cautious view on the investment team's instability in recent years continues to weigh on our conviction, and while the investment process is sensible, we continue to have reservations about its repeatability. We reiterate the strategy's People Pillar at Below Average and Process Pillar at Average. Stephen Andrews took over as lead manager in April 2020 upon the departure of predecessor Andrew Swan. He has 26 years of industry experience, although he had limited portfolio management experience before joining BlackRock in November 2017. While our view on Andrews has gradually improved over time, we remain circumspect about whether he can successfully navigate different market environments over the long run. The strategy also saw two comanager changes over the past five years. Lucy Liu, who replaced Nicholas Chui as comanager when the latter left in January 2023, is a China specialist and has 19 years of industry experience, although she has yet to further ramp up as a portfolio manager, especially in a regional context. The high turnover within the supporting team in recent years remains a source of concern, notably with six departures in 2022 and five departures in 2023. The team shrank to 33 members as of year-end 2023 from 42 two years ago as most of the leavers were not replaced. The strategy continues to follow a style-agnostic approach that combines top-down and bottom-up research, with the aim of outperforming in different market environments. Andrews seeks to identify inflection points in the market by assessing various style factors and sectors' attractiveness to set the general direction for the strategy. He determines which style factors or sectors to rotate into and leverages the analyst team for individual stock ideas. While the approach is reasonable, it depends much on the manager's intuition and execution. This makes the process potentially less repeatable, and Andrews' track record in navigating different market environments has so far been mixed. Overall, our conviction in this Asia ex-Japan strategy remains tepid. |
Morningstar Pillars | |
People | Below Average |
Parent | Above Average |
Process | Average |
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