SIG has appointed Five Oceans Asset Management to run its $327m Skandia Global Equity Fund instead of JP Morgan Asset Management. The JP Morgan AM managers, Howard Williams and Sandeep Bhargava, also run the $1bn JPM Global Dynamic Fund, part of an overall $8bn Dynamic strategy.
While JP Morgan AM’s take on the change, according to a company spokesperson, is that it has more to do with the exclusivity required, a SIG spokesperson said: “The investment rationale will always lead the choice of the manager and its mandate. While we prefer the exclusivity of the managers running our funds, this is certainly not the lead factor”.
The latest change also sees SIG swap a long-only growth manager with an aggressive approach to Five Oceans AM that will run the fund with an absolute return mindset.
Adam Smears, head of investment research and portfolio manager at SIG in the UK said: “In reality this translates to a portfolio filled with high conviction names, with the commensurate volatility managed through an adept use of derivatives.”
The strategy is to use a diversified portfolio of sectors and styles, aiming to significantly outperform the MSCI World Index and deliver a positive return over a rolling three to five year-period. They do so using a concentrated 50-stock portfolio.
