Hargreave tops Top 100

Martin Lau, whose fund sits in the China/Greater China sector came in second place, while Evy Hambro whose resources funds sit in the specialist sector came in third.

While only accounting for 16 of the top 100 funds overall (14 if you exclude the two that are classified in the European smaller companies and Japanese smaller companies sectors), four of those funds were in the top ten, cementing the notion that the more largely under-researched sectors are where stock pickers really show their worth.

The other smaller companies managers in the top ten are Simon Scott, Paul Marriage and Andy Brough and Rosemary Banyard, who co-manage their fund at Schroders.
Schroders, itself deserves a mention as it had 6 managers in the list, one more than its nearest rival Old Mutual. Artemis, BlackRock, First State, Invesco Perpetual and Standard Life all had four managers in the list.

According to Tilney Bestinvest, the list aims to provide an insight into some of the leading individuals in the profession. And, while it acknowledges the difficulties of ranking equity fund managers, it has attempted to cut through some of the confusion by looking at how the various fund managers have performed in a given sector across their entire careers.

In order to do so, it has examined their respective performance versus a benchmark, their identifiable track record and then assessed “the extent to which the manager has on average managed to beat (or not beat) their relevant benchmark index after the impact of costs.”
In order to strip out the effect of one or two “lucky calls” the firm has also equally weighted average monthly performance and the manager’s return over the last five years as well as looking at percentage of months each manager has beaten their benchmark index.

And, finally, in order to reward longevity of performance, it has given a half-weighting to the length of the manager’s track record in the sector.

Tilney Bestinvest Top 10 equity fund managers