A step up
Taking over the running of the £2.8bn Special Situations fund from Sanjeev Shah in January 2014 was seen by most as a big promotion, but Wright, who has been with Fidelity since joining as a graduate in 2001, sees things differently.
“The big step up for me was in 2010, when I started looking at all-cap mandates before taking over on Special Values in September 2012,” he says. “It has not been as big a step as you might think because smaller companies include everything but the largest 150 companies in the UK, and there are about 12,000 other investable companies in the UK. So the universe only increases by about 15% in terms of the number of companies.”
Running Special Situations alongside UK Smaller Companies and Special Values has led some fund pickers to suggest Wright is now overloaded, but this is something the manager disputes.
Around 75% of the names in UK Smaller Companies are also in Special Situations, while there is also a big overlap with Special Values.
The promotion of analyst Jonathan Winton to co-manager of UK Smaller Companies in February 2013 was, says Wright, a way of giving him responsibility for stocks only in that fund.
“The reason I bought Jonathan in on Smaller Companies is so he can work on the 26 names that are not in the other two funds. He is solely in charge of those, and I don’t spend the time doing the analysis and company meetings on those.
“While I am still on top of 75% of the assets in that fund, he does day-today work. I find being co-manager on that fund beneficial to the others because Jonathan is another source of ideas,” he says.
Looking at the very largest companies is, Wright concedes, often a more complex task that requires a different approach, while others, such as building materials company Wolseley, are looked at in the same way he would a smaller company.
