River and Mercantile Asset Management has topped FundCalibre’s Fund Management Equity Index 2017 with a five-year average outperformance of 51.33% as their value style returns to favour.
FundCalibre’s annual index ranks all active fund managers in the Investment Association (IA) sectors on set performance criteria placing its top five as River and Mercantile, Stewart Investors, Unicorn Asset Management – which held the top spot for the past two years, Baillie Gifford and Old Mutual Global Investors (OMGI).
As well as River and Mercantile, J O Hambro Capital Management (JOHCM) was named as another value house among the biggest risers over the past year, jumping from 24th to 13th position, reflecting the style rotation.
Timely as the FCA is carrying out its review of the active fund management space, Darius McDermott, managing director at FundCalibre, said: “Consistently good active management is not a myth. Six groups have been in our top 10 in the past three years, each in turn demonstrating outperformance over rolling five-year periods. This suggests a high degree of skill among their fund management teams.”
New entrants were Charlemagne, Hermes, Matthews Asia, Davy and Polar Capital.
FundCalibre said two themes dominated the newcomers – most were specialist investment houses running funds with a country or sector focus, and they all had several funds passing a five-year track record, which means more groups met the qualification criteria.
Yet the index is showing a breadth of outperformers representing both small and specialist boutiques, and larger global groups.
The report revealed that 11 out of the top 20 companies had more than 10 relevant funds and nine of these companies had more than 70% of their equity funds outperforming.
It highlights Schroders, as having 43 qualifying equity funds – of which 88% have outperformed the peer group over five years; and Fidelity, with 38 qualifying funds – 74% of which have outperformed over the same period.
