Chelsea said it was “saddened” to see that Trevor Greetham’s Multi Asset Strategic fund remained in the RedZone for the third consecutive time.
In addition, Fidelity’s UK Growth, UK Select, European Opportunities were featured on the list.
A Fidelity spokesman said: "While any underperformance is disappointing, with such a diverse range of funds [of more than 70] some of our managers will go through periods of underperformance. Fidelity’s range of funds offers investors a variety of styles and approaches which can be affected in the short term by the prevailing market environment but we aim to outperform the market in the longer term.
"This is a small number of funds in our OEIC range but we do take any underperformance very seriously and do everything we can to make sure our fund managers have the support they need, including access to one of the largest proprietary research teams."
Former serial worst offender Scottish Widows/SWIP was matched by Legal & General, each with seven funds featured, representing £2.3bn and £4.8bn respectively.
Chelsea’s RedZone list “names and shames” the worst-performing funds over the last three discrete years, while its DropZone flags those funds from the RedZone that have underperformed their sector averages by the largest amounts over the cumulative three-year period.
Still awaiting turnaround
Topping the DropZone, with “some of the worst underperformance ever recorded in this report” was SF Webb Capital Smaller Companies Growth with a massive decline of 60%, underperforming the sector average by 112%.
Chelsea managing director Darius McDermott said: “[The UK Smaller Companies] sector has performed extremely well in the past three years, and the other funds in this area which have made it to the RedZone have actually returned 30%-50% in the period. On the other hand, SF Webb Capital Smaller Companies Growth has managed to lose investors almost 60%. That's simply shocking and, while the manager was changed in 2012, no turnaround has yet begun.”
The latest factsheet from Webb Capital admitted that the impact of portfolio turnover was still underway and the team was tidying up “a number of troublesome legacy investment positions”.
The RedZone lists 151 funds totalling almost £35bn while UK All Companies is the sector with the most funds listed, at 21.
