Skagen has a new global equity fund, the Skagen Focus, which will include best stock picks from its portfolio managers Filip Weintraub and Jonas Edholm.
It will invest across sectors and geographies in order to diversify portfolio risk and is indexed against the MSCI All Country World index. The portfolio is composed of 35 core companies and these include under-researched and ‘unpopular’ equities. Its top 10 holdings will make up between 40 and 50 per cent of the fund. The group says the fund is suitable for investors with an investment horizon of five years or more.
The fund has an entry charge of 1 per cent and a maximum exit charge of 0.3 per cent depending on the share class. It also has an ongoing charge of 1.6 per cent pa. The management fee is from 0.8 per cent to 3.2 per cent pa.
The fund is Norwegian kroner-denominated. Dividends are automatically reinvested. The minimum subscription amount is €50 (£36.70).
Comment:
The Skagen Focus fund is a concentrated, global equity fund which looks to invest across geographies and sectors in order to spread risk. Both portfolio managers have decades of experience and are active value-based stockpickers.
The fund is suitable for investors with a five-year or longer investment horizon and has a bottom-up perspective when concentrating on specific companies. The fund is similar to Skagen’s existing Global fund – launched in 1997 – in terms of stock selection and its diversified portfolio. That fund has returned 15.2 per cent year-to-date.
The fund is benchmarked against the MSCI All Country World index, which captures a large- and mid-cap representation across developed and emerging market countries.
The US comprises more than 50 per cent of the country weighting of the index, suggesting that if the fund follows its benchmark it could end up heavily invested in the region.
Despite a well-thought-out and diversified portfolio, there is still risk that the fund needs to take into account – specifically market fluctuations, potential changes in exchange rates since the fund is kroner-denominated, general economic conditions and specific sector and corporate circumstances around the world.
