We have added Man GLG Asia (ex Japan) Equity fund to our Recommended list.

Snapshot

An Asia ex Japan equity fund that is managed flexibly with no pre-determined style bias.  The manager aims to navigate the fund through different market cycles with consistency.  The focus is upon earnings revisions, and the team looks for those companies that have the greatest potential in this regard.  Within its sector, the fund features in our 'Larger-Cap, Blend' category.

Fund Description – Key Points

• The fund is managed by Andrew Swan, an experienced practitioner who has a track record in managing Asian equities through different cycles.  He joined from BlackRock, where he was Head of Asian Fundamental Equities and Head of Fundamental Emerging Markets.  Mr Swan and his team work from Australia and Hong Kong, providing a global perspective towards investing across the Asian region.
• The team aims to capture the turning points in company earnings revisions using a combination of bottom-up research and top-down macro analysis to identify how companies, sectors and investment styles will perform in various market conditions.
• In a sector that is well-endowed with highly stylised stock-picking funds, the blending of top-down and bottom-up investment disciplines is relatively unusual and supports the team’s overtly flexible and broadly style-agnostic approach.

Characteristics & Utility

• This is a flexible offering that is relatively concentrated in nature.  The team aims to tilt the portfolio as the backdrop changes and so the approach is deliberately style agnostic.
• From a market-cap perspective, the fund has a larger-cap bias.  However, the manager is prepared to allocate capital to investments across the market-cap spectrum when opportunities arise.
• The fund has a high degree of idiosyncratic stock risk.  Also, the manager is prepared to deploy material country and sector bets when he sees the opportunity.  As such, there is scope for meaningful risk/return deviations from the benchmark, particularly at inflection points for the market or the economy. However, idiosyncratic risk taking will always be the primary risk and return driver.
• While the approach has in-built pragmatism, investors who are concerned about relative performance over shorter-term periods should consider pairing the fund with an index-orientated offering.

To view our full factsheet, please visit the fund page on our website.