Opportunities in an increasingly networked world

One stock benefiting from this theme is Millicom, which provides prepaid cellular telephony services to 20m customers in 16 emerging markets across Latin America, Africa and Asia.

“It has been a fantastic performer and is a classic global stock as it is domiciled in Europe and quoted in the United States, but does not have business in either,” explains Mr Stanic. “It is in markets with low penetration and rapid growth.”

Although his approach to portfolio construction is very much bottom-up, he also keeps one eye on the macro-economic factors around the world.

Being able to tap into the resources at Newton also helps. “We have a team of industrial, career analysts who look at their sectors on a global basis,” he explains. “We work closely with them to root out ideas and they are very important.”

On the sell side, a stock will usually be cut when there is a change in either the investment case or in his expectations for the company.

“Sometimes stocks appreciate incredibly quickly and other times you need greater patience,” explains Mr Stanic. “Also, if a stock becomes too expensive versus our expectations, then that would trigger a pretty active review discussion.”

Turnover varies but has been as high as 100 per cent. “We have no problem selling stocks which have not worked or in which the investment case has changed,” he says. “Typically over half the names stay consistent but we will be active around a position in the stock.”

The biggest change over the past few months has been increasing the exposure to the healthcare sector, which includes both pharmaceuticals and medical technology stocks. As a result, the weighting has increased from 1.5 per cent to 11 per cent.

“This has been driven by a combination of the increasing needs of ageing western populations and the fact emerging markets have been able to consume more healthcare products,” he explains. “Pharmaceuticals had been under a lot of pressure, but valuations have become cheaper and have started to look attractive.”

For example, Roche is now a very substantial holding in the fund, while other positions include Smith & Nephew, which he views as cheap compared to its growth prospects, as well as having a good product range.

Mr Stanic hopes that exposure to such names will help maintain the fund’s track record. “We are very pleased with our performance over the first three years and it has not been driven by any single sector,” he says. “It is a diversified portfolio of global stocks across different geographies and sectors. Our goal is to keep finding those good ideas and keep generating performance for investors.”