The Jupiter Global Value Equity fund will contain a concentrated, actively managed portfolio of 30 to 50 stocks and look to achieve long-term capital growth by investing in undervalued companies around the world.
It will be co-managed by Whitmore (right above), Jupiter’s value equities head of strategy, and Dermot Murphy (left), a fund manager in the value team.
Whitmore runs one of the asset manager’s most popular funds – the Jupiter UK Special Situations vehicle.
Currently standing at £1.9bn, the fund has a decent track record, outperforming the IA UK All Companies sector over three and five years, returning 18.5% and 50.3%, according to data from FE. Since Whitmore became the primary manager in 2006, the fund has delivered returns of 155.78% versus its benchmark, the FTSE All Share’s, 89.07%.
Over the last year, however, the fund delivered a negative return of -1.9% compared with the sector average of 1.8%.
He has also managed the £2.4bn Jupiter Income Trust since its launch in 2013.
This is not Whitmore and Murphy’s first time running a global mandate. Overseas companies have featured in Jupiter’s UK value portfolios since 2011. In 2016, they began looking after a global mandate for an institutional client and took the reins of the $397m Jupiter Global Value Sicav.
The team’s global portfolios will be run with the same investment process and philosophy as the UK value strategies, hunting for lowly valued securities with “resilient balance sheets” and “good businesses” to capture “value premium”.
The pair will typically invest in global companies with a market cap above $1bn.
“We see a clear opportunity in this environment to construct a globally diversified portfolio of companies,” said Whitmore.
“Value as a style of investing has had its worst period of relative under-performance versus growth investing since the late 1990s, therefore we think this is an opportune starting point at which to launch a fund.”
Stephen Pearson, CIO at Jupiter, added: “Ben and Dermot have demonstrated that they can deliver robust returns for clients over the long term. All the work and analysis that goes into the new fund will help inform the process for clients in the team’s fund range and vice versa; we believe the new fund will sit neatly alongside the team’s portfolios, offering clients the option of greater diversification while retaining access to Ben and Dermot’s value strategy.”
