Star manager Alex Wright (pictured), who runs the £3.1bn Fidelity Special Situations fund, was presented with the coveted FE Alpha Manager of the Year award at a ceremony held at the Tate Modern yesterday. 
The awards ceremony, which is held to celebrate managers with consistently strong long-term track records in generating risk-adjusted alpha, also saw a further 12 managers receive accolades for top performances in their respective fields.
Charles Younes, research manager at FE, said: “This year’s award winners have combined consistent performance throughout their career with phenomenal outperformance over the past year in their respective categories.
“This is an incredible achievement in the face of unpredictable markets and unexpected political events such as Britain’s vote to leave the EU and the election of Trump to US president.”
FE Alpha Manager Alex Wright first joined Fidelity in 2001 as a research analyst and has been a portfolio manager of Fidelity UK Smaller Companies since its launch in 2008. He became the sole manager of Fidelity Special Situations in 2014 and has also managed the closed-ended Fidelity Special Values trust since 2012.
All three investment vehicles have four FE crowns and, in total, they equate to an AUM of more than £4bn.
Over his fund management career, the manager has outperformed his peer group composite by 260.57 percentage points with an average total return of 397.66 per cent. He has done so with a Sharpe ratio, which measures risk-adjusted returns, more than double that of his peer average.
Performance of Wright vs peer group composite since start of data
Source: FE Analytics
The manager is renowned for his bottom-up, contrarian stock selection process, which focuses on companies further down the cap spectrum that have fallen out of favour among the broader market but are undergoing positive transitional periods. He also focuses on protecting on the downside, so looks for businesses with strong balance sheets, steady earnings streams and a general margin of safety.
The other 12 winners, as well as those shortlisted for awards, are shown over the next three pages.
