Investec: The IFAs' view

Richard Troue, investment analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown

"We like Alastair Mundy a lot. He’s built up a long and successful track record at Investec managing a few funds – Cautious Managed, UK Special Situations, Global Special Situations among them. As head of that contrarian team he’s doing something quite different, investing in out of favour stocks which might be ignored by other investors, and the key thing for them is waiting for their ideas to come to fruition – that’s an approach that requires some patience."

"We follow the Global Special Situations fund on the Wealth 150, just because we think it offers a bit more scope than the UK fund. We don’t have much else of theirs on the Wealth 150, but that’s not because we think they don’t have talented teams."

"Their commodities team are very good, and are building a strong franchise in the commodities and energy space. Enhanced Natural Resources was actually taken off our panel, only because we weren’t keen on the charging structure. We don’t think that charging structure is a bad thing necessarily, but it can mean the TER shoots up if the fund performs well, and that’s something investors really need to be aware of and consider before they invest."


Adrian Lowcock, senior investment adviser, Bestinvest

"We’re big fans of Alastair Mundy’s contrarian style and we like his consistency of performance and approach over the long term. He is similar to Woodford in that he is happy to suffer underpferformance in the short term if it means that in the longer term he’s well positioned and can outperform in subsequent years."

"At the other end of the scale Investec has some sexier stuff like their great natural resources team which runs Investec Enhanced Natural Resources. Those funds are well established now, and are really starting to challenge better known funds in that quarter like JPM Natural Resources."


Robert Love, research director, Asset Intelligence

"We like the commodities fund. It uses a different strategy to the JPM fund, using derivatives to gain exposure to positions and to be able to play what can be a volatile market, enhancing returns and reducing risk through the same method. They have quite a lot of expertise in this relatively specialised field."

"One of the things they’re best known for is Cautious Managed, that is probably their stand our area, but we don’t tend to use this as we do our own asset allocation and model portfolio. Smaller companies is another area where they are strong. The manager of Invetec UK Smaller Companies has been around since 2006, so he’s got a strong track record in this area – which is an area where you can add huge amount of value if you know what you’re doing."