F&C Investments is to revamp its Water and Agriculture fund as a new Global Equity Unconstrained fund after its managers defected to Liontrust.
The F&C Global Unconstrained Equity strategy will build a “best ideas” portfolio of 30-40 high-conviction stocks, invest on a long-only basis and focus on attractively valued high-quality companies. The fund will be managed by Jamie Jenkins and Phil Doel.
Mr Doel previously managed F&C’s global equity income trust, the British Assets Trust, before it was taken over and renamed by BlackRock.
Mr Jenkins runs the £173.9m Responsible Global Equity fund and the €138m (£99m) Japanese Equity fund.
The Responsible fund has performed well in the past five years, outperforming the sector average. It returned 60.4 per cent in the five years to April, while the Investment Association Global sector returned 52.1 per cent, according to the fund’s factsheet.
The change has been approved by the FCA but must pass a shareholder vote at an EGM on June 23. The changes would take effect from July 7.
The previous managers of the $11.2m (£7.3m) Water and Agriculture fund, Kristof Bulkai, Patrick Cadell and Hugo Rogers, left the firm for Liontrust, where they will be running a new Global Strategic Equity fund, which is set for launch at the end of this month.
The F&C Water and Agriculture fund had underperformed its benchmark, 3-month dollar Libor +200 basis points, for the past five years, returning 4.6 per cent versus the benchmark’s 12.4 per cent.
