Morningstar has downgraded Rob Burnett’s Neptune European Opportunities fund due to “performance variability”.
The major research company has downgraded the £517m fund from silver to bronze.
Morningstar acknowledged Mr Burnett is a “talented and longstanding manager”, however, added it had become concerned about recent performance.
The company said there had been “a number of ill-timed shifts in the portfolio” and these had led to “performance variability”.
The fund is in the bottom quartile of its peer group in the past three and five years. It has returned 29.9 per cent in the past five years, compared to the IA Europe excluding UK sector, which returned 50.3 per cent in the same period., according to the fund’s factsheet
Despite this, Morningstar still thinks investors will benefit from Mr Burnett’s moves to limit short-term trading and “make better use of the risk management tools at his disposal”.