Investment Adviser articles from May 2004

Investment Adviser archives from May 2004

Zenith European turns to pharmaceuticals and beer.
May 10, 2004... The AGBP4.19m fund, managed by 2GC's Charles Glasse, has 21 per cent invested in the sector, compared to 16 per cent for its benchmark -- the euro-based FTSE Europe ex UK index. Stocks held in the Zenith European Capital Growth fund include...

Departing managers odds on for TR fund job.
May 10, 2004... The management contract of the TR Property fund is likely to move with the departing managers, according to analysts Close Wins. Colin Turner and Marcus Phayre-Mudge, who worked for Henderson Global Investors, recently resigned from their...

Trade bodies call for more saving education.
May 10, 2004... The government came under fire from the pensions and investment industry last week at a Treasury select committee. As part of the government-led investigation into restoring confidence in long-term savings, the Investment Management...

Experts force EU regulatory break.
May 10, 2004... ASSET managers have helped force a change that will see a break in European rulemaking. Investment experts from across the enlarged European Union have campaigned to stop major regulations being brought in. This is because the European...

Rate threat to spec sits and small caps.
May 10, 2004... out of smaller capped compaSmall-cap and special situations funds could face a rough ride as the world enters a higher interest rate environment. Historically, small-caps have significantly underperformed larger caps when interest rates go...

Dinning quits UBS for Aegon.
May 10, 2004... Aegon Asset Management has poached Bill Dinning from UBS to become head of strategy. Mr Dinning will be responsible for co-ordinating and the company's views on global markets working closely with the chief investment officer and the...

Insight ready for EU entrants.
May 10, 2004... Iain McNeill, manager of Insight's AGBP55.6m European Discretionary and AGBP26.4m European Dynamic funds, said improving living standards in the 10 new member states should fuel faster growth in the region. Mr McNeill said Insight expected...

Baring Asia up 23.6% in first year.
May 10, 2004... The fund of hedge funds has grown from its launch size of about AGBP8m in April 2003. The fund invests in Asian markets and has the ability to use funds which use long and short strategies. Tom Maier, head of Alternative Investment for...

UBS Wealth buys private client adviser Laing & Cruickshank.
May 10, 2004... The acquisition will add Laing & Cruickshank's 76 advisers serving high net-worth and mass affluent clients across the UK to UBS Wealth Management's own network of 100 advisers based in London and Manchester. Laing & Cruickshank's clients,...

New Star's UK Monthly targets transport, water.
May 10, 2004... John Cornes, manager of the AGBP62m ex-Edinburgh asset allocation fund, has bought 1 per cent holdings in Transport Development Group and Tibbett and Britten each, confident these would "participate fully in the general economic recovery". ...

IMA finalises zero sector.
May 10, 2004... The Investment Management Association is thrashing out final details for its new Zero Bond sector. Following months of consultation as part of its sector monitoring process, the association has said it will separate the UK Other Bond...

IFA Gaeia set to join forces with Bromige.
May 10, 2004... Gaeia Global Ethical Investment Advice is to merge with Bromige & Partners. The Manchester-based IFA, which specialises in socially responsible investment advice, and Bromige, based in East Sussex, have now joined. This is doubling the...

Turkey and Hungary pay off for Baring's Bockstaller.
May 10, 2004... Baring's Emerging Europe trust has shifted money into Turkey and EU accession country Hungary. The quarterly report for the AGBP146.7m trust showed outperformance against the benchmark thanks to growth in Hungary and Turkey, with new...

Jones to take head of sales role.
May 10, 2004... Richard Jones is taking over from Phil Jefferson as head of UK and European retail sales at First State Investments. Mr Jefferson has decided to leave First State to join Henderson Global Investors as its director of UK retail. Mr...

Man offers hedge access with structured roll outs.
May 10, 2004... Man Investments has launched two capital-guaranteed structured products which invest in hedge fund strategies. The Man Global Strategies Diversified Series 2 is an unregulated offshore collective investment, offering two routes to invest in...

Japan and European Small Cos lead in April.
May 10, 2004... The Japanese and European Smaller Company sectors set the pace in April, according to the latest statistics. Data from Lipper showed the performance of the Japanese Smaller Companies sector outstripped all other IMA sectors in April. ...

Firms are unsure about data regulations, says survey.
May 10, 2004... MORE than eight in 10 financial firms are in the dark about what client information they need to hold. As firms prepare to implement new European and Financial Services Authority regulations on data handling, a survey revealed that most...

An exciting start to the year.
May 10, 2004... The first quarter of 2004 proved to be an eventful and exciting start to the year. One major innovation is the way we now conduct Oeic and unit trust business. Barclays Open Invest launched in mid-January as the trading platform for approved...

Legg sees assets grow to AGBP2.23bn.
May 10, 2004... Assets under management at Legg Mason Investments more than tripled in the year to 31 March. They now total AGBP2.23bn, representing a 22 per cent increase from the previous quarter. Paul Boughton, managing director (Europe) of Legg...

Killik cools on Dexion Absolute.
May 10, 2004... Wealth manager Killik is recommending investors go neutral on the Dexion Absolute trust, despite advocating it as a means of accessing hedge funds. The trust is an actively managed portfolio of hedge funds with multiple managers,...

Investors are on the move, says Mercer.
May 10, 2004... INVESTORS have moved into equities and fixed income this year at money market's expense, according to Mercer. In its quarterly Defined Contribution Universe summary, Barry McInerney, worldwide partner at Mercer Investment Consulting in the...

Saunders' UK Growth shuns cyclical equities.
May 10, 2004... Investors should avoid stocks that behave like bonds, according to the manager of the AGBP82m Martin Currie UK Growth fund. Jeff Saunders, who has an AA-rating from Citywire, said he was positioning the fund away from firms such as...

Bad news for FTSE can be good news for investors.
May 10, 2004... Structured product specialist Keydata's latest Innovative Growth plan is designed to provide positive returns even if the market falls. The second issue of the plan, which has a six-year term, offers investors 75 per cent participation in...

Bolton tops Bestsellers Q1 survey.
May 10, 2004... Anthony Bolton's AGBP3.53bn Fidelity Special Situations has emerged as the top-selling fund among major IFAs. Investment Adviser's Bestsellers quarterly survey, conducted in April, revealed the AGBP1.5bn Newton Higher Income and AGBP781.4m...

Firm reminds on annuity care fee.
May 10, 2004... TAX breaks for annuities could help pensioners in need of care double their income, according to the Care Funding Bureau. The bureau is advising pensioners who have to pay for care to check out whether they qualify for a care fee annuity,...

Pensions gap may force families under one roof.
May 10, 2004... PENSION under-funding may result in the return of multiple generations living under the same roof, according to Skipton Building Society. The building society's Financing Your Future report claimed pension under-funding would cause the...

West to take control of Morley Small Cos.
May 10, 2004... Morley Fund Management has appointed former Invesco fund manager Robin West as manager of its UK Smaller Companies fund. The AGBP138.6m Norwich UK Smaller Companies fund, run by Morley, had been managed by David Lis, who will change roles...

Actuary warns of pensions tax sting.
May 10, 2004... People who have moved uncapped pension savings into a capped scheme could face a hefty tax bill when pension rules change. Andy Bell, managing director of pension specialist AJ Bell, said changes made to the formula used to determine the...

JPMF Income & Capital switches towards equities.
May 10, 2004... Managers of the AGBP164.5m JPMorgan Fleming Income & Capital investment trust have shifted the portfolio in favour of equities. Last week, the trust reported a total return of 34.4 per cent between 1 March 2003 and 29 February 2004,...

Emerging markets aid Baillie's Scottish.
May 10, 2004... Emerging markets lifted the NAV of the Baillie Gifford Scottish Mortgage investment trust by 33.6 per cent in the past year. The AGBP1.35bn trust beat its benchmark index -- comprising 50 per cent FTSE World index ex UK and 50 per cent FTSE...

Invesco Asia heads for China's defensive areas.
May 10, 2004... INVESCO'S Asia investment trust has moved into more defensive Chinese stocks, attempting to brace itself against "choppy" trading conditions. Manager Stuart Parks said sectoral rotation into defensives was necessary to allow for the...

Investor confidence dips for a third month.
May 10, 2004... Investor confidence dipped for the third month running in April, as investors questioned how much further equities have to run in the short term. JPMorgan Fleming's Investor Confidence index continued to fall from its January high of 92...

Isis and Artemis benefit from Cairn oil discovery.
May 10, 2004... Fund managers at Isis and Artemis with Cairn Energy in their portfolio are congratulating themselves after its meteoric rise this year. Shares in the AGBP1.6bn firm soared 167 per cent to AGBP10.59 (on 6 May) from AGBP3.98 at the start of...

SLI shifts its bias to Europe and Japan.
May 10, 2004... Standard Life Investments has altered the bias of its global portfolios away from the US and UK towards Europe and Japan. It said that if interest rate increases were moderate, as is expected, then the current phase of profits growth and...

US and Asia are leading recovery, claims DWS.
May 10, 2004... THE world economy has reached "cruising speed", with US and Asian markets leading the recovery, according to DWS Investments. Seven Bell, global chief economist at fund manager DWS Investments, said strong US job figures had also prompted...

Oil price rise threatens growth.
May 10, 2004... Rising oil prices could put a brake on global growth, according to Standard Life Investments and JPMorgan Fleming. They are already acting as a tax on the global economy and if they continue their march higher, they could even spark...

Cash levels plunge as companies plan floats.
May 10, 2004... Fund managers are expecting reduced liquidity in the market as private companies take advantage of stable stock markets to float. Alex Savvides, part of Mark Costar's team managing the AGBP233.5m JO Hambro UK Growth fund, said: "We have...

Good value in European equities -- Collins.
May 10, 2004... European markets still offer good value, according to the manager of Collins Stewart's European Equity Focus fund. Rod Sleath, manager of the Guernsey-based AGBP14m fund, said: "Generally, the European market is cheap and within that there...

AIG fund of fund looks to UK corporate bonds.
May 10, 2004... By Susan Butterworth AIG Life has extended its fund of funds range by launching a lower-risk option this week. The AIG Life Managed fund is the lowest-risk offering in its existing range, which includes the Cautious Managed, Balanced...

European fund launches on the wane.
May 10, 2004... There has been a slowdown in fund launches throughout Europe and the UK, according to recent market research. Research conducted by German consultancy Feri Fund Market Information revealed that 78 funds were launched in February, down from...

Investment sales up for Norwich.
May 10, 2004... This is according to Gary Withers, chief executive of Norwich Union Life, who said as people became increasingly aware that less cash was being ploughed into pensions they had started to look towards investment offerings to bolster their...

FSA to get tough over splits firms.
May 10, 2004... FIRMS calling the FSA's bluff in its probe into splits face being hauled before a full investigation. Some of the 21 firms involved in the probe have signed up to a mediation process after being told of the evidence the FSA has against...

All clients are equal as Cazenove scraps retail.
May 10, 2004... Cazenove Fund Management has merged its retail and institutional marketing teams and dropped the term retail from the team's title. It believes differentiating institutional and retail clients is an old-fashioned approach and the term...

FSA favours guidelines and light regulation.
May 10, 2004... THE FSA has unveiled final proposals that would leave the clarification of soft commissions in the hands of investment managers. The regulator has set out guidelines from its initial consultation CP176 that would allow firms to sort out the...

China and Japan ease out of US Treasuries.
May 10, 2004... Asia investment specialists are advising investors to wait-and-see before acting on reports of a sell-off of US Treasuries. The US Federal Reserve reported AGBP347m of the government bonds had been sold in the last week of April -- although...

Oil service groups offer best exposure.
May 10, 2004... Such firms depend on oil majors' capital expenditure, which should now pick up due to the strength in oil prices, the managers said. Barry Norris, manager of the AGBP15.5m Neptune European Opportunities fund, explained that oil majors could...

All that glitters is... a smile.
May 10, 2004... Gold seems to be losing some its shine --Aand David Franklin of Christows has come up with an unusual explanation for its demise. With its price tumbling down to below $390 per ounce from highs of $430 earlier this year, the golden era of the...

A free fiver? Don't bank on it.
May 10, 2004... Britain's third largest bank, Barclays, has failed to give AGBP5 away -- free and with no strings attached. At the end of April the bank took an interesting assignment upon itself. It tried to find out ways of engaging customers to financial...

Selestia beefs up funds platform.
May 10, 2004... Selestia has signed Cazenove and Bedlam to its funds platform bringing eight new funds to its market. The platform now offers 546 funds from 51 fund managers. The Cazenove funds to be added on 14 May are the AGBP572m UK Growth & Income,...

IFAs are the cornerstone of Standard Life's business.
May 10, 2004... Investment Adviser: On 19 April you launched an enhanced mutual funds proposition with a total of 75 funds from 13 fund managers under the Sigma brand, which was itself launched on 15 March with your new pension fund range. What will this add...

Advisers prove their worth.
May 10, 2004... Investment Adviser's first Fantasy Portfolio Challenge has had a successful ending (see pages 40-41). Not least, of course, for the winners. But, as importantly, it has acted as a testimony to advisers' investment excellence in their fund...

Rising rates dampen property's appeal: L&G.
May 10, 2004... David North, director of L&G Asset Management and manager of the 10-year-old Distribution fund, claimed that despite a history of staggering performance, the property market was not as attractive as before. "Benchmarked against other...

Why the media hates financials.
May 10, 2004... When Tesco reported sparkling annual results, media coverage was uniformly encouraging. Financial editors drooled at the rate at which the group was earning profits (roughly AGBP54 each second). Supermarkets in general, and Tesco in...

The great inflation debate.
May 10, 2004... One of the most interesting debates of recent times has been centred on inflation and deflation, and in particular, which will feature in the major global economies. Those with a leaning towards the inflation argument have suggested the...

China boost for commodity funds.
May 10, 2004... Commodities have been in the news almost on a daily basis over the past 12 months or so. The China story has, of course, been the main driver of this. According to figures from JPMF, more than 50 per cent of the world's cement was consumed by...

Have we seen the last of this bear market?
May 10, 2004... Is the bear market over? Or has the rebound since March 2003 only been a brief interlude, a suckers' rally, in a much longer downturn? Peter Oppenheimer, the Goldman Sachs investment strategist, has tried to answer this question. He has...

I want to break free.
May 10, 2004... Fund management boutiques have been part of the investment scene for well over a decade. Yet they have come to the fore only of late, as more and more big-name managers have been poached from the established houses. And as boutique funds...

Right skills for the right job.
May 10, 2004... Investment managers sell their ability to make successful decisions. They have long divided their markets into segments based on type of customer -- retail or institutional -- and developed distinct distribution strategies for each segment....

A moderate success.
May 10, 2004... Fund management as a business has tended to defy concentration. In most markets there is a fair number of fund managers of middling size. There are good reasons for this and they are likely to persist. That means many predictions about the...

Reports of death are exaggerated.
May 10, 2004... The past decade has seen a relentless consolidation within the fund management industry. Once familiar names such as GT, MIM Britannia and Perpetual have merged together to form "oil tanker" investment houses, rather than the racing yachts of...

There is work still left to be done.
May 10, 2004... The difference between success and failure among fund managers comes down to listening to clients and delivering well targeted funds that meet their needs, regardless of how big or small the provider in question is. No wonder the boutiques have...

Taking care of business.
May 10, 2004... A tension has been building in the funds industry serving to throw into sharp relief many of the issues that consistently test its resources, resolve and direction. Yet in 20 years the personality of the funds sector has metamorphosed. It...

Ashburton dips a toe in gold.
May 10, 2004... Boutique manager Ashburton has taken a 4 per cent weighting in gold, claiming it had waited for the perfect opportunity. According to Peter Lucas, editor of Ashburton's Investment Perspective, the discretionary fund manager was hoping to...

Justin labours over Queen's riches.
May 10, 2004... How much are the Queen and Prince Charles really worth? How do they spend their cash? And why is it so hard to discover how much of their wealth is private, and how much belongs to the nation? These were some of the mysteries that Justin...

FPC winners trust first instincts.
May 10, 2004... Nimble funds positioned for recovery led Andy Burnett, partner at Manchester-based IFA Bucklands, to win Investment Adviser's Fantasy Portfolio Challenge. Mr Burnett's Hindsighter portfolio topped the Income portfolios participating in the...

Hanks for the memories...
May 10, 2004... L&G's David North revealed his celebrity doppelganger as he celebrated his funds' 10th birthday. David, proud father of the Distribution fund, told investment journalists that his good looks had been mistaken for those of the infamous Tom Hanks...

High risk equity fares the best for Income competitors.
May 10, 2004... Although the competition has an Income category, the specified asset allocation rules have created an investment space which is much more like balanced managed in investment management speak, rather than pure income orientation. But...

Buy and hold wins out for Growth.
May 10, 2004... One year on, and little in either performance or tactic separates the top five in the Growth category. None have gained their laurels by selecting the highest return funds in each geographical category. None have allocated their discretionary 5...

Domestic economies will be key for Asia.
May 10, 2004... The Schroder Far East fund, valued at AGBP57.1m as at 26 April, was launched in February 1990. Richard Sennitt took over the fund in November 2001, running it in London. It had previously been managed in Hong Kong, but the shift was part of a...

Note of caution hits Far East.
May 10, 2004... The table on the right lists the Equity Asia Pacific funds in order of their risk-adjusted returns over the past three-and-a-half years. Risk ratings were only possible for nine funds in the sector. On this basis, the best performer was the...

Second half of bull run has hardly begun.
May 10, 2004... Interest rates are expected to start rising shortly in both China and the US. Does that spell the end of the global bull market? Does it mean that Asian markets are particularly vulnerable? The former is another matter and I do not think that...

Value in Asia's smaller firms.
May 10, 2004... Aberdeen announced the launch of a unit trust version of its Asian Smaller Companies investment trust. The Aberdeen International Asian Smaller Companies fund, which is Dublin-based and denominated in US dollars, is aimed at sophisticated...

Willingness to take refuge in cash is an advantage.
May 10, 2004... by gail moss The AGBP32.1m Threadneedle UK Limited Issue fund, which aims to achieve above average capital growth from a concentrated portfolio of UK equities, was launched on 12 May 2003. It has outperformed the sector since launch...

Far East is bouncing back.
May 10, 2004... With increasing and broad-based signs that inflation is finally developing in Japan, and the worrying increase of 1.7 per cent year-on-year in Consumer Price Index inflation in March in the US, a global transition from deflation to inflation...

Investing with confidence.
May 10, 2004... As the major equity market indices have continued to post increases since the lows of March 2003, it is no surprise that fund sales were significantly up on previous years. The Investment Management Association figures show retail gross...

Investors lag behind the market's swing.
May 10, 2004... UK intermediaries remained snugly wrapped in caution, ignoring the gains made in Asia and the Far East as well as Japan, according to Investment Adviser's Bestsellers survey for the first quarter of 2004. Conducted in early April, the...

Investors prefer to buy British.
May 10, 2004... Bond funds are still popular with our clients and throughout the UK as illustrated by January and February's IMA figures. However, UK All Companies is the most popular sector by a large margin. This is exactly what one would expect...

Better products vital for future.
May 10, 2004... The strong returns delivered by equity markets from the low point in March last year were no doubt partly responsible for the improved sales in the first quarter this year. Prevailing market conditions have always swayed investor sentiment and...

Element of doubt still persists.
May 10, 2004... Our comment at the end of the last quarter in 2003 that caution would undoubtedly take some time to be dulled from the memories of investors held true in the first quarter of this year. Signs of the global economy recovering have continued to...

richard sennitt.
May 10, 2004... The fund is managed using a team-based approach. I work in London, alongside three other pan-Pacific managers. We are supported by 30 analysts across the region who come up with stock ideas. We use a bottom-up approach, taking a view of...

Sales showed marked upturn.
May 10, 2004... We experienced a marked upturn in fund sales over the first quarter of 2004. Rising markets during the previous 12 months have helped boost investor confidence, and the outlook, while uncertain, appears more positive than it has done for some...

Merry-go-round keeps turning.
May 10, 2004... There has been a change in investor sentiment over the past few months with more people being prepared to be confident about putting some of their portfolio into equities. The funds to benefit from this seem to be those with a more balanced...

JPMF takes fear, bias and ego into account.
May 10, 2004... JPMorgan Fleming has adopted behavioural finance processes -- which predicts irrational investor decisions -- in the management of its US fund. Management of the AGBP99.7m US fund, a sub-fund of the JPMF Oeic, has been taken over by Silvio...

False dawn or the rising sun?
May 10, 2004... The positive global economic performance over the past year has encouraged market sentiment to improve in some of the least loved sections of the investment world. While the Far East has been noted in the past few years on the basis of...