The Apollo multi-manager team has bought back into emerging market equities with the $127m (£76.7m) Standard Life Global Emerging Markets Equity Unconstrained fund.
Ryan Hughes, lead manager of the Apollo range, said emerging markets now appeared to be “oversold” following years of underperformance compared to developed markets.
The Apollo team has added emerging market equity exposure back into its Cautious, Balanced and Adventurous funds, funding the purchases out of cash.
Mr Hughes said he had invested in the Standard Life fund because manager Ross Teverson has a “highly active and unconstrained approach”.
“We consider there to be many compelling stock specific opportunities across the emerging markets and the unconstrained approach from Ross, with his very high active share is well placed to benefit,” Mr Hughes said.
The Standard Life Investments (SLI) fund is a Luxembourg domiciled Sicav that was launched in October 2012.
It has significantly outperformed the MSCI Emerging Markets index since its launch, returning 9.4 per cent in the year to the end of February, compared to a 5.7 per cent drop in the value of the index.
SLI also have two onshore retail emerging market funds, but the unconstrained fund is only available offshore.
It is part of SLI’s top-performing unconstrained range which also includes Ed Legget’s £1.1bn UK Equity Unconstrained fund, Thomas Moore’s £463m UK Equity Income Unconstrained fund and Mikhail Zverev’s £98.7m Global Equity Unconstrained fund, which are all top quartile of their respective IMA sectors in one, three and five years.
Emerging markets have underperformed developed markets for more than three years due to fears of slowing growth and fears around the impact the withdrawal of US quantitative easing on emerging equities.
But the emerging market index rallied considerably in the second half of March, rising by nearly 10 per cent while developed markets remained flat.
