Funds from Baillie Gifford, Rathbones and Lindsell Train are among some of the top-quartile performers from the global equity sectors with some of the cheapest fees, according to research by FE Trustnet. 
In this series FE Trustnet aims to look at the actively managed funds that have a strong track record over the five years to 30 June 2019 and highlight which funds were the most expensive (bottom-quartile OCF) and which gave you top returns at a cheaper cost (top-quartile OCF).
The OCF – or ongoing charges figure – is a calculation of the operational expenses of owning a fund and includes a range of costs and is calculated by taking the sum of expenses incurred during the past 12 months and divided by the average net assets over that period.
Having previously looked at the UK equity fund sectors, FE Trustnet has taken a look at the top-quartile performers from the two global equity sectors, which can be found below.
Source: FE Trustnet
The first fund managed to earn a few accolades in this OCF deep-dive. Not only was did it produce a top quartile performance at one of the cheapest OCF charges over the past five years, but it is also the largest fund out of these top-20 value for money funds: Lindsell Train Global Equity.
The £8.8bn fund was launched in March 2011 and is overseen by FE Alpha Managers Michael Lindsell and Nick Train and co-manager James Bullock.
Making a return of 172.86 per cent in the five years to 30 June 2019, the five FE Crown-rated Lindsell Train Global Equity fund had an OCF of 0.65 per cent.
The fund is a firm favourite with investors and its quality growth style and low turnover approach has performed strongly in recent years.
Next up, making a total return of 129.14 per cent over the period under review was the £832.5m Baillie Gifford Global Discovery fund, which had an OCF of 0.78 per cent.
Overseen by FE Alpha Manager Douglas Brodie the fund’s process has a bias towards investing in smaller companies especially those operating in industries with the potential for structural change and innovation within them. From these Brodie is looking to produce above-average returns investing globally.
In third place for producing top-quartile returns at a cheaper cost is the Rathbone Global Opportunities fund, run by FE Alpha Manager James Thomson and Sammy Dow.
With an OCF of 0.75 per cent the £1.5bn fund is run on Thomson’s ‘secret sauce’ process, a formula that he developed after completely rebuilding his investment process following the 2008 global financial crisis.
Whilst the fund is in the IA Global sector with access to all geographic markets or sectors Thomson said that this doesn’t mean he has to be invested everywhere all the time as global means flexible. He, therefore, has no exposure to emerging markets as he believes this requires a more grassroots nuance.
The cheapest top quartile performer was the Schroder Global Equity fund, which had an OCF of 0.53 per cent having made a top quartile return of 89.52 per cent. The £532.4m fund has been managed by Alex Tedder since 201 and was launched in July 1988.
The best performing global equity income fund with a bottom-quartile OCF was the £5.6bn BNY Mellon Global Income fund overseen by Nick Clay, which made a total return of 91.81 per cent with an OCF of 0.80 per cent. It has a yield of 2.90 per cent.
The cheapest top performer from IA Global Equity Income sector was the Kames Global Equity Income fund, which made a total return of 74.72 per cent with a low OCF of 0.65 per cent. The $374m fund is managed by Mark Peden and Douglas Scott and has a yield of 3.15 per cent.
Source: FE Trustnet
Moving onto the other end of the OCF scale and examining the funds that, whilst they produced a top quartile return they did at a much higher cost, arguably at less value for money.
In this part of the study all of the funds came from the IA Global sector. The fund with the best performance at a higher cost was the Seilern Stryx World Growth fund, which made 143.98 per cent return over five-years within an OCF of 1.72 per cent.
The five FE Crown-rated fund is run by Corentin Massin, Michael Faherty and Fernando Leon, and it targets “outstanding absolute returns” with a heavy emphasis on risk management. The strategy invests in developed OECD markets and aims to identify high-quality companies with proven track records, sound financials and predictability of future earnings growth.
However, the top-quartile performer that with the highest OCF was Vontobel Global Equity.
Source: FE Trustnet
With an OCF of 2.04 per cent the Vontobel Global Equity is the most expensive top-performing fund in our study, even though it did produce top-quartile returns of 104.57 per cent.
The $2.9bn, four FE Crown-rated fund is managed by Matthew Benkendorf and has a quality growth investment style aimed at preserving growth.
As such, companies in the portfolio have relatively high long-term earnings growth and above-average profitability.