Two Ucits equity funds were separately announced on Monday, one looking to benefit from the emerging markets and the other focusing on US small caps.
Paris-based TOBAM launched its Anti-Benchmark Emerging Markets Equity Fund while Neuberger Berman, a US-based manager, brought its US Small Cap Fund to the European market. The funds launched with $135m (€95m) and $60m in initial subscriptions respectively.
TOBAM’s latest product further broadens its patented France-domiciled Anti-Benchmark strategy fund range. The firm claims the strategy maximises diversification through a one-step optimisation at the global level, bypassing the sector, country and style biases that more traditional allocation methods, such as capitalisation weighting, can lead to.
The fund aims to outperform the MSCI Emerging Markets Index by 4-6% per annum over a market cycle. Its maximum management fee is 1.5%.
Neuberger Berman’s offering is the newest addition to its Dublin-domiciled Ucits fund umbrella. Its US Small Cap Team seeks to identify growing, financially strong small caps that it believes to be mispriced, while generally avoiding hyper-growth companies due to potentially unsustainable growth and above average stock price volatility.
Over the 10 years to March 31 2011, this strategy outperformed its benchmark, the Russell 2000 Index, by an annualized 5.39% in dollar terms and gross of fees. Annual management charges of 0.85% and 1.70% are levied on the fund’s institutional and advisor share classes respectively.
According to the firm’s head of Europe, Dik van Lomwel: “International investor demand and the strategy’s proven track record were the primary drivers for launching the US small cap equity strategy in our Ucits range”.
©2011 funds europe
