The five FE Crown-rated Premier Multi-Asset Global Growth fund has got off to a strong start since its current management took charge of the portfolio in June 2012, having almost doubled its peer average.
Performance of fund vs sector over management tenure
Source: FE Analytics
However, it is under-the-radar for global investors to an extent as it currently resides in the IA Flexible sector, so that the team isn’t constrained to holding specific regional weightings. 
It is also the sole holding in co-manager Simon Evan-Cook’s (pictured) personal pension, after his weighting in the fund continued to increase since he took over the helm three years ago alongside fellow managers David Hambidge, Ian Rees and David Thornton.
“I’m spending my time running the fund on a day-to-day basis, so why would I spend time running a separate portfolio for my pension?” he pointed out.
“I think it’s a useful mental discipline as a manager to think along these lines. It’s the type of fund that should be considered as a pension investment, so the fact I’ve got my own pension in there helps me to manage it in the way that the investors in that fund expect it to be managed.”
The fund aims to provide long-term growth mostly through equities, but it is also able to invest in funds that hold bonds, commercial property and alternative investments.
Evan-Cook says that this adds diversification benefits to the £58m fund, and this is magnified by the fact that it is a fund-of-funds.
Currently, Premier Multi-Asset Global Growth has 35 holdings, and in total he says there is likely to be between 1, 400 and 1, 500 stocks in the entire fund.
“If you take a look at a normal global equity fund and it would probably have about 50 stocks in it. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that but you’ve then got a level of stock-specific risk, and you might also have level of manager style risk,” he explained.
“The number of stocks we hold collectively might put a lot of people off because they might wonder how we can possibly keep track of all those stocks, and the answer is we don’t. We keep track of 35 managers who then keep track of 40 to 50 stocks each.”
While the manager acknowledges that the number of stocks sounds daunting to investors, he says he is confident that each one of those stocks has been handpicked by someone who is the best at what they do in their field so investors aren’t losing out.
However, Evan-Cook says he would question whether the manager of a 100-stock portfolio would know each individual holding well enough.
“This is not an issue for the way we run our fund, because we know that each of our regional managers has the right number of stocks they’re looking after,” he added.
The manager says that there isn’t any one holding in the fund that he expects to well and truly power the performance of his pension, and that he attributes the fund’s performance to how the funds work together as a collective.
“Quite often the fund you’re most excited about is not necessarily the one that outperforms performs over the course of the year and the one you’re less excited about turns out to be the one that does outperform,” he said.
The fund’s largest holding though is the soft-closed Fidelity FAST Emerging Markets, which has five FE Crowns and has been managed by Nick Price since its launch four years ago.
Over this time frame, it has returned 33.22 per cent, outperforming its sector average and benchmark by 40.21 and 35.68 percentage points respectively.
Performance of fund vs sector and benchmark since launch
Source: FE Analytics
In an article published earlier this month, Evan-Cook told FE Trustnet that the fund is expensive in terms of charges, but it nevertheless offers attractive value due to the manager’s competence and its stellar returns.
“There has been a lot written about active share over the last few years, and fund has an active share of more than 100 per cent, which seems odd but it’s a long/short fund and that enables them to have more than 100 per cent exposure,” he explained.
“The manager is very active on his long book but he’s also very active on the short book too. Price’s approach is very much fundamentals-driven and bottom-up, and he chooses very good companies that are trading on attractive prices.”
Fidelity FAST Emerging Markets has an ongoing charges figure, which takes into account an annual management charge, of 2.01 per cent. It also charges a performance fee of 20 per cent if the fund outperforms its benchmark by more than 2 per cent on an annualised basis.
Unlike a global equity benchmark, Evan-Cook and the team holding roughly equal amounts in the various geographical regions – as well weightings to property and alternatives.
For example, they have 16.8 per cent in emerging markets, 15.3 per cent in Asian equities, 14.9 per cent in Japan, 14.2 per cent in the UK, 13 per cent in Europe but just 5.1 per cent North America due to their concerns about the high valuations on offer.
Some of their biggest holdings include Hermes Asia ex Japan, GLG Japan Core Alpha, JOHCM UK Opportunities and Baillie Gifford European.
While some investors are put at ease if a manager has a significant weighting of their personal portfolio in the fund that they run, others are less certain.
The counter-argument is that the manager could end up running the fund as though it is their own money rather than a collective of investors’ money, which could result in them making judgement calls outside of the fund’s specifications.
Evan-Cook, however, says that this is a misconception and that most people understand the benefits of having a fund manager’s money alongside their own within a holding.
“It’s actually something I look for when I’m investing with individual equity fund managers because I know they’re putting their best ideas in that fund,” he said.
“I’m confident that if they’ve got their own money in there and they’re worried about a specific risk, they will be reflecting that in the fund. Whereas if they’re able to separate it from their pension, they won’t necessarily be doing that because they’ll run their pension differently. I think it’s a much more honest approach.”
Darius McDermott, managing director at Chelsea Financial Services, also likes to see managers invested in their own funds as he says it gives them more alignment with his company’s end clients.
“I would heavily question a manager that doesn’t want to invest in their own fund. Well done Simon, is all I would say,” he said.
In terms of a manager holding their entire pension in their fund, McDermott says there isn’t a right or wrong answer as to whether this is preferable as it depends on circumstances.
“I have had some managers say that their livelihood is related to equities, their bonus depends on whether their fund does well and they’ve got their children’s ISAs in there, while other managers just don’t have the cash flow to be heavily invested in their fund because they might have children in private schools, etcetera,” he pointed out.
“So there isn’t a right or wrong answer but, if I looked a fund manager in the eye and asked them why they haven’t bought into their own fund and they said they didn’t want to, I wouldn’t buy it either.”
Premier Multi-Asset Global Growth has a clean ongoing charges figure of 1.81 per cent.
