Asset manager Livingbridge has launched a multi-cap income fund.
The fund will be managed by Ken Wotton, who also manages Livingbridge’s other UK fund the CF Livingbridge UK Micro Cap fund.
The new fund aims to deliver top quartile performance through focused stock picking, with an emphasis on dividend growth.
Mr Wotton said: “Our success to date is based on our deep understanding of the businesses we invest in.
"This, along with our differentiated approach enables us to bring a razor-sharp focus to our bottom-up investing.
"We assess companies through our four cornerstones of investing: people, platform, position and performance.
"We analyse a company’s financial performance, work to ensure the right people are in place, the business is prepared for growth and that it has the right strategy in place.”
“Livingbridge invests in the sectors that drive the UK economy: consumer markets; technology, media and telecommunications; business services; and healthcare and education."
Livingbridge's £83m micro cap fund has returned 194 per cent over the past five years, compared with 121 per cent for the average fund in the IA UK Smaller Companies sector in the same time period.
Adrian Lowcock, investment director at Architas, said: “This is an interesting fund launch and indeed group.
"Livingbridge’s experience of working with and investing in small companies it has built up in the private equity space through the management of the Baronsmead VCT range should be of significant value to investing in small companies.
"Their approach is more likely to avoid some of the challenges faced with investing in listed companies where in the short term valuations can change on sentiment not fundamentals. So far they have been very successful in delivering performance.”
"However this new fund does take them in a slightly different direction which introduces some risks.
"They have traditionally been in the smaller cap space and focused on growth. I am not so concerned about their ability to identify companies with good dividend potential as this has played a role in delivering returns for VCTs.
"The issue is can they repeat the processes successfully as they go up the market cap scale. Given they are an experienced team and stockpicking skills need to be very sharp in the micro cap space they should be able to translate this into larger businesses.”
david.thorpe@ft.com
