Legg Mason has converted its Asian equity fund into a global emerging markets equity fund.
Following shareholder approval for the change, the Legg Mason Asia Pacific fund has become the Legg Mason Emerging Markets Equity fund.
Robert Wang and Russell Shtern have taken over the management of the fund from Ray Prasad, while its objective has been changed to emphasise the focus on emerging market equities.
The fund will be run on a top-down macroeconomic basis, concentrating on “the business a company is in (sector), where the business is located (geography) and currency effects”.
The fund had been part of a review by Legg Mason of all the funds managed by two of its affiliates, Batterymarch and QS Investors, following the merger of those two firms.
A spokesperson for Legg Mason said the review had concluded the fund would be better served being run on QS Investors’ “diversification based investing” platform.
The spokesperson said: “We are seeing more interest from clients looking for approaches which offer alternatives to traditional market cap weighted products, which have been shown to have inherent biases such as country, sector and stock concentration risks.
“Hence the move to alternative weighting schemes.”
