sig finds next best thing

Skandia Investment Group (SIG) has ditched Goldman Sachs as sub-adviser for its $157.6m European Equity Fund, appointing General Electric Asset Management (GEAM) instead.

sig finds next best thing

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The mandate change follows one made last week, which saw JPMorgan taken off SIG’s Global Equity Fund in favour of Five Oceans. 

A spokesperson for the group explained that the business model at SIG allowed it to change managers on a fund whenever it chose, and so it is always looking for that "next best thing".

He added that looking at the performance figures of the GEAM Europe Select Equity Strategy, they are more impressive than those from Goldman Sachs and that going forward SIG feels GEAM has the right approach to managing money in the sector.

GEAM’s strategy is to construct a high-conviction portfolio and it employs an active, unconstrained approach with a focus on growth at the right price.

The team follows a bottom-up research driven stock selection with the objective of delivering alpha.

Over one year GEAM’s strategy run for institutional investors has lost 3.94%, compared to a drop of 10.42% for the MSCI Europe. Its two-year performance shows returns of 8.21%, versus 1.39% from the benchmark and over three years it has returned 22.86%, compared to the benchmark’s 13.9%.

James Millard, chief investment officer for Skandia Investment Group, said: "We are delighted to be bringing GEAM into our stable of sub-advisers. Its focus on high quality companies with proprietary products in growth markets has delivered outstanding results over many years.

"We are fortunate to have found a partner who has the capacity to run a highly concentrated portfolio in a risk controlled manner. We believe GEAMs skill set will match perfectly the funds objectives and significantly benefit our clients."

Outside its new mandate for Skandia, GEAM manages mainly institutional money and has AUM of over $122bn.

Skandia said whenever it is picking a manager to run one of its mandates it is looking for something different and prefers that the manager is not available anywhere else, although this is not compulsory.

Meanwhile, the review and potential re-branding of SIG’s parent group Old Mutual under Paul Feeney, former head of international distribution at BNY Mellon, continues with an update on developments expected in the next few months.

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