Crux rebrand could give UK fund more mainstream appeal

Crux’s rebranding of its UK equity fund has been hailed as move which could give the fund more mainstream appeal and help differentiate it from the small and mid-cap approach favoured by founder Richard Pease.

Starting from today, 2 December, the long-only UK equity fund, managed by Jamie Ward (pictured), will be known as Crux UK Core. It had previously been known as Crux UK.

There will be no change to the fund objective, investment process or structure and Ward will remain at the helm.

Crux explained in a press release it hopes the relabel “better reflects the fund’s intended position in client portfolios”.

Crux’s UK franchise must step out from Pease’s shadow

In renaming the fund, AJ Bell head of active portfolios Ryan Hughes said Crux is trying to reposition the fund as a “mainstream holding” for a variety of client types and escape the shadow of founder Richard Pease.

“As a firm, Crux is naturally associated with its founder Pease who has a strong link to a medium and smaller companies throughout his career and it looks as if Crux wants to make it clear that different funds in the Crux stable invest in different ways, particularly in the UK where the firm now has three funds,” said Hughes.

Crux UK Core forms part of the fund group’s suite of UK funds which includes Richard Penny’s Crux UK Special Situations fund and the Crux UK Opportunities fund, also managed by Ward.

Ward’s Crux UK Core and Penny’s Crux UK Special Situations, which stand at £68.4m and £41.6m respectively, are dwarfed by Pease’s £1.6bn Crux European Special Situations fund.

Willis Owen head of personal investing Adrian Lowcock said Crux’s UK funds are “going to take a little longer to grow” given their managers didn’t have the benefit of bringing their previous funds with them.

Blue-chip approach reflected in fund rebrand

Lowcock applauded Crux’s relabelling efforts. “It is good that a fund group is willing to change the fund’s name as they consider how they are received and most importantly used by investors,” he said. “A fund name needs to at least partly reflect what investors should expect from it.”

Of the trio of UK funds, Lowcock notes Crux UK Core is “more of a blue-chip UK equity fund” so could be considered more of a core holding than Crux UK Special Situations “So, the name helps differentiate it but doesn’t commit the fund to holding solely blue-chip companies,” he said.

The bulk of Ward’s 26 holdings are made up of FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 names, with Barclays, BP, Glaxosmith Kline and British American Tobacco making up the biggest weightings in the top 10.

But Hughes said investors shouldn’t assume the fund invests close to the benchmark because it has been renamed as a “core” fund.

“It’s a very concentrated strategy that’s invests very differently to the index showing how important it is to look beyond the name of any fund in the market,” he said.

Crux UK ranks in the second quartile of funds in the IA UK All Companies sector over one, three and five years. But recently it has seen performance dip, landing it in the third quartile of funds.

Source: Trustnet

Ward was appointed to the mandate in 2015 and became the sole manager in early 2018. Since he took the helm the fund has returned 11.7% against the FTSE All Share’s 4.4%.