Global collaboration means best-of-breed

Benchmark-unaware with low portfolio turnover, the MFS Concentrated Global Equity Trust (Wholesale) has been named Money Management/Lonsec Fund Manager of the Year in the global equities (broad cap) category. 

The past 12 months have yielded some surprising results for MFS Investment Management, according to senior managing director, head of Australia, Marian Poirier. 

She said the fund, which returned 9 per cent above index in the last year, was very much focused on the long-term, with a team of 56 equity analysts working across Boston, London, Tokyo, Singapore, Sydney and Toronto. 

According to Lonsec, the 20 to 30 stocks held in the portfolio represent the best ideas from the broader-based global equities strategy of portfolio managers David Mannheim and Roger Morley, the latter joining the fund in October 2009. 

Poirier said MFS’ integrated research approach is a key driver for the fund as it focuses on global collaboration across eight sectors. 

“We don’t have equity analysts based on their own, working in silos,” she said. 

“The teams spend an awful lot of time together both formally and informally - we need to make sure these guys are chatting and getting to know each other globally to be able to share ideas.”  

With a bottom-up investment approach, the fund is interested in companies that are able to consistently grow their earnings - but which are valued at a reasonable price. Part of this process is stress testing the earnings of a company, Poirier said. 

Category finalist the Magellan Global Fund had a clear objective of preserving investors’ capital and generating a return of 9 per cent after fees through business and economic cycles. 

That’s according to Magellan Financial Group chief executive Hamish Douglass, who said a significant percentage of the portfolio’s capital is invested into high quality businesses when “we feel that they can be purchased at discounts to our intrinsic valuations”, he added. 

“We are aiming to identify industry sectors that we feel have some form of long-term tail-wind associated with them,” he said. 

In the past 12 months, Magellan’s investment team has grown from around 12 to 19 members. 

Douglass said the current organisational structure and size of the investment team - led by Gerald Stack - was ideal for a boutique investment firm specialising in global equities and global listed infrastructure. 

The T. Rowe Price Global Equity Fund rounded out the finalists in the global equities (broad cap) category.  

According to portfolio manager Scott Berg, the portfolio was designed around the belief that active management, driven by bottom-up, fundamental research, could uncover and exploit anomalies among global equities.