The group had three funds on the list – Global Basics, Recovery and American, which accounted for 53% of assets in this year's survey. The majority of this is in the £7bn Recovery fund, where manager Tom Dobell says he remains committed to turning the fund around, but the BestInvest report added: "This is a big fund with a sizable exposure to smaller companies that are inherently more illiquid and which could take a while to reposition."
The £3.8bn Global Basics fund has changed managers with Graham French retiring from fund management last year. New manager Randeep Somel has said he will keep the basic structure for the fund, but will invest more into technology companies.
F&C and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) each have three funds on the list. BestInvest suggests that SWIP's takeover by Aberdeen may improve performance. The three F&C funds are the Global Thematic Opportunities, Pacific Growth and UK Alpha funds. Fidelity American and Fidelity Japan also appear on the list. New manager Peter Kaye has yet to turn around performance on the £1bn American fund, having taken over last year.
North America continues to be the area where the failure rate is highest, with 13 funds representing 22% of the universe making the list. However, the global sector has the highest absolute number of funds, with 15 funds considered 'dogs'. In contrast, only 5% of UK All Companies funds are dogs and each of the UK Equity Income, UK Smaller Companies and European sectors only have a single fund.
In terms of fund groups, Invesco Perpetual, Threadneedle, Jupiter, Henderson, First State, BlackRock, Artemis and Standard Life Investments have no funds on the list.
To qualify as a 'dog' fund, a fund must have failed to beat its benchmark over three consecutive 12-month periods. The fund must also have underperformed its benchmark by 10% or more over the entire three-year period of analysis.
