David Jane, M&G head of equity investments picks up the prize for Group of the Year from William Watling, Capita business development director.First State Investments scooped two awards for the best funds in the Asia Pacific excluding Japan and Global Emerging Markets categories, also having a great night following excellent recent performance by its funds.
It was also a good night for individual fund managers, given the methodology used to identify winners. Alpha plays a key role in whittling down the numbers of funds eligible to be awarded or given runner-up places in each category.
Hence, Neil Woodford continued his career by picking up the award for best fund in the UK Equity Income category for Invesco Perpetual high Income, just pipping the Artemis Income fund.
Other winners included: Cazenove for its Cazenove European fund in the Europe excluding UK category; Baring Asset Management for its Directional Global Bond in the Global Bond category; Neptune for its Global Equity fund in the Global Growth category; SGAM for its Core Alpha fund for the Japan catagory; Martin Currie for its North American fund in the North American category; BlackRock for its Gold & General fund in the Specialist category.
Not to be downplayed are the runners-up. Aberdeen also makes its presence felt in the Asia Pacific excluding Japan and Global Emerging Markets categories, as does JP Morgan for its work in Europe excluding UK, and Global Emerging Markets. On this basis M&G picks up another couple of mentions, obtaining placings in the Global Growth and North American categories.
Newton, Standard Life, Fidelity International, Schroders, Odey, Scottish Widows, and Sarasin were also shown by the awards methodology to have strong runners placed in a number of different categories.
Methodology
The Trustnet Awards 2009 were designed to reward performance through management in the fund industry and continue their growth as a benchmark for retail fund management, and for the benefit of Trustnet's 250,000 users including financial advisers in the UK.
The awards categories highlight eleven IMA sectors. Trustnet highlights these as ones which have or will attract retail investor interest over the next 12 months
The methodology used to generate a shortlist for each sector is:
- Funds must have a Three Crown Rating from Financial Express, which can only be achieved through a combination of high alpha, low volatility, and consistency over three years;
- Funds must be available to retail investors and have assets under management in excess of £100 million;
- Performance over the past 12 months is then considered as the final criteria for the shortlist.
For the prestigious Group of the Year Award, panellists each nominated one group based on the criteria that it offered an excellent fund range and performance through management.
The AFI is made up of 18 leading independent financial advisers who specialise in fund advice, a full list and their company profiles can be found at www.trustnet.com/afi