Fund Times: 29 September – 3 October
Japanese Bank Take 9.9% Stake in Aberdeen; Fortis Purchase Remaining Artemis Shares, but Look to Offload; Evershed Leaves New Star; Invesco Perpetual Adds to Global Equities Team; Midas Capital Appoint Callow to Income & Growth Trust; L&G Change Portfolio Construction on Japanese and Pacific Growth Trusts; and Morningstar Publish Third Quarter Fund Review
Japanese Bank Take 9.9% Stake in Aberdeen
Aberdeen Asset Management this week announced that it has entered into a business and capital alliance with Japanese banking giant Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation (‘MUTB’), a wholly owned subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (‘MUFG’). MUFG is the largest banking organisation in Japan and the world’s second largest bank holding company. Under the terms of the deal MUTB intends to initially acquire 9.9% of Aberdeen’s issued share capital from certain existing shareholders, with the option to purchase a further 10% up to a maximum of 19.9% in the next 18 months. The deal should allow Aberdeen easier access to the Japanese market with MUTB promoting Aberdeen’s products in the Japanese institutional marketplace. If MUTB's holding reaches 15% they will be entitled to appoint a non-executive director to Aberdeen’s board, but the group do not expect any adverse effect on their retail fund management arm.
Fortis Purchase Remaining Artemis Shares, but Look to Offload
Artemis this week announced that Fortis Bank has acquired the remaining 32.9% of Artemis Asset Management’s share capital in accordance with prior contractual arrangements. There have been no changes to the Artemis board, and the group remain operationally independent from Fortis in all material respects. The current deal was done as time was running out following the Fortis/ABN Amro deal in October 2007 which required the change of ownership within 12 months.
Fortis now plan to sell its entire holding in Artemis after being saved from the brink of collapse earlier this week by an €11.2bn rescue package from three Benelux countries. Artemis is currently valued at roughly £1bn with around £14 billion in assets under management across both the retail and institutional space.
Evershed Leaves New Star
Patrick Evershed left New Star this week after exceedingly poor performance at New Star Select Opportunities.. New Star confirms that recent hire Trevor Green has replaced him.
Many New Star funds have struggled in the credit crunch, badly denting the firm's earnings, but Evershed's woes at Select Opportunities are of longer standing. Although the fund is in the UK All Companies IMA sector, it has been dominated by heavy stakes in small- and micro-cap stocks, and we have thus placed it in our UK Small-Cap Equity peer group. Relative to that group, the fund has placed in the bottom decile in each of the past three calendar years, and has only once escaped the category's bottom quartile since its 2002 launch. Its five-year annualised loss of 2.44% lags the category average by more than 10 percentage points per year on an annualised basis. Evershed has more than 40 years of investment experience, and had come to New Star from Rathbones, where he managed Rathbones Special Situations, in late 2002.
Green took over the equity portion of New Star Managed Distribution from Toby Thompson on 16 June. His performance at RCM was mixed. He outperformed his peers in the Morningstar UK Mid-Cap category by 3.5 percentage points per annum for the six years he was running the UK Mid-Cap fund, but trailed his peers in the Morningstar UK Large-Cap Blend and UK Large-Cap Growth categories at UK High Alpha and UK Growth, respectively.
Invesco Perpetual Adds to Global Equities Team
Invesco Perpetual announced this week that it has appointed Paul Boyne as Fund Manager within its Global Equities team based in Henley. Boyne will report to Invesco CIO Bob Yerbury after joining from Bank of Ireland Asset Management (BIAM) where he was a Director and lead manager for its Global Equity Product. In addition he was a member of the Senior Investment Team and part of the Asset Allocation Committee. In total Boyne has over 15 years global equity experience after beginning his career at Morgan Stanley in 1993.
Midas Capital Appoint Callow to Income & Growth Trust
Midas Capital Partners this week announced that Simon Callow has been appointed to the position of Assistant Manager of the Midas Income & Growth Trust. Alan Borrows will remain the lead manager of the Trust. Callow has been at Midas since 2005, and has previously worked with Burrows on the groups Income & Growth Trust, the CF Midas Balanced Income Fund and the CF Midas Balanced Growth Fund. Callow has 12 years experience in the investment management industry, having previously worked at BWD Rensburg and Savoy Asset Management.
L&G Change Portfolio Construction on Japanese and Pacific Growth Trusts
Legal & General Investment Management announced this week that it has changed the portfolio construction of its Japanese Trust and the Pacific Growth Trust. From the beginning of September the number of holdings in the Japanese Trust were reduced from 80 to 60 whilst the number of stocks held within the Pacific Growth Trust is being reduced from approximately 95 to 60. The move is in line with LGIM's active equity philosophy that high conviction ‘best ideas' portfolios will outperform throughout the cycle. The move has already been implemented on the groups UK and European offerings.
Morningstar Publish Third Quarter Fund Review
Morningstar published its review of third quarter fund performance, with key findings on commodity-oriented issues, the financials sector, and equity and fixed interest offerings across emerging markets, Europe, Asia, and America. Click here to view the report.
