JO Hambro’s Mark Costar and Alex Savvides have been awarded the accolade for the first time, while the team behind Veritas Global Equity Income also rose to the top. However, it was outstanding managers of offshore funds and other specialist areas who were the biggest beneficiaries of the latest rebalancing of the FE Alpha Manager rankings.
Previously a manager had to run a unit trust or an OEIC to qualify, but this year running a fund in the IMA universe is acceptable.
This means that a number of names who are less familiar to UK investors have shot to the top of the list.
Both managers of the Veritas Global Equity Income team, Andy Headley and Charles Richardson, have been awarded FE Alpha Manager status for the first time.
Richardson has returned 30.39 per cent over the past three years against the 18.4 per cent of his peer group composite, according to data from FE Analytics.
Performance of manager vs peers over 3yrs
Source: FE Analytics
The largest of the three funds Headley and Richardson run together, the £2.3bn Veritas Global Equity portfolio, is domiciled in Ireland and requires an initial investment of €35,000. Despite this it is the second-largest fund in the IMA Global Equity Income sector.
It has a running yield of 4.5 per cent and one of the lowest total expense ratios (TER) in the sector – 1.18 per cent, according to FE Analytics.
Richardson and Headley also manage Veritas Global Focus and Veritas Global Real Return – the latter an offshore hedge fund.
Their colleague at Veritas, Ezra Sun, also made the list; Sun runs Veritas Asia Pacific ex Japan which is in the IMA Global sector, as well as the five crown-rated offshore portfolio Veritas China.
Ben Rogoff is another new entrant to the list, having been rewarded for his work on specialist technology funds.
Rogoff runs the open-ended Polar Capital Global Tech and closed-ended Polar Capital Technology Trusts.
The trust has substantially outperformed the newer fund over the past three years, returning 60.12 per cent against the 41 per cent of the open-ended portfolio.
Performance of trust vs fund over 3yrs
Source: FE Analytics
The trust has doubled investors’ money over five years, with returns of 113.79 per cent and has made 239.17 per cent over the past decade.
Rogoff has 10 per cent of his portfolios in Apple, and large holdings in Google and Samsung.
JPM’s Oleg Biryulyov has won the accolade for his performance on a number of geographically focused funds.
Turkey was one of the best-performing markets of last year, and Biryulyov’s JPM Turkey Equity fund, which he runs with Sonal Tanna, had an excellent year, rising 41.72 per cent.
The fund underperformed its benchmark, however, the MSCI Turkey 10/40 index, which rose 57.68 per cent. The fund lost less than its index in 2011, a bad year for the Turkish market.
Performance of fund vs index over 2yrs
Source: FE Analytics
The Turkish index is particularly volatile, scoring 27.64 per cent in annualised terms over the past two years, while the figure for the fund is 23.46 per cent.
Biryulyov also runs JPM Africa Equity and JPM Emerging Europe Middle East & Africa Equity, both top-quartile performers over the past three years in the offshore Emerging Markets Equity sector.
Absolute return funds have come under fire in recent years, but five managers who work on such portfolios were rewarded.
New FE Alpha Manager Ajay Gambhir runs the RWC Europe Absolute Alpha fund which sits in the offshore Absolute Return sector. Gambhir previously managed a number of European portfolios for JPM.
The fund has made 6.12 per cent since launch in July 2010, with an annualised volatility of 13.41 per cent.
Sonja Uys won the accolade for her performance on the Insight Absolute Insight absolute return fund. FE Trustnet looked at the fund in some detail in a previous research article.
For a full list of the 61 newcomers, please click here.