Skandia Global Best Ideas - Underlying Manager Changed
By Alexander Davies | 12 Jun, 2008
Skandia has announced that Aberdeen’s Hugh Young will no longer be managing the Asian mandate for the Global Best Ideas Fund. Treasury Asia Asset Management will replace Aberdeen. We spoke to Skandia to find out why.
This decision was made after Skandia’s research uncovered Treasury Asia’s strong fund management capabilities. They believe Treasury’s approach will fit naturally with the other managers that feature in the fund. According to Skandia, Treasury tend to run concentrated portfolios that focus on taking advantage of short term opportunities. Aberdeen, on the other hand, look for themes that can develop over time and tend to buy and hold their stocks for the longer term.
Despite switching fund managers Skandia has stated that they are happy with Aberdeen’s management capability and the Aberdeen Asia Pacific Fund will remain part of their other Skandia Multi-Manager Funds.
We are surprised by this change and we question why the fund manager has been changed now. Skandia were aware of Aberdeen’s investment style when they employed Hugh Young to manage this portion of the portfolio when they launched their fund. If they were not content with this management style at the time we wonder why the manager was chosen in the first place.
Our analysis shows that the two funds have very similar performance since the Treasury Fund launched last year, with Aberdeen slightly out performing. Since the beginning of 2008 and over the last three months Aberdeen has also out performed Treasury. Please remember past performance is not a guide to the future and that we have compared the performance of two funds, not each manager’s ten best stock ideas.
The Aberdeen Asia Pacific Fund is one of our favourite in the Asia Pacific sector and Hugh Young is one of our preferred managers. We continue to rate him highly and we are pleased to include this fund in the Wealth 150, a list of our favourite funds in each sector. We would like to give Treasury Asia the chance to prove themselves.
We like the Skandia Best Ideas concept; where ten managers each pick their ten best stocks for a single fund. Each manager specialises in a certain area and picks stocks in their field. We are happy with the other managers that feature in the fund and with this in mind we are happy for the Skandia Global Best Ideas Fund to also remain in the Wealth 150.
