Russell Investments has made a raft of changes to underlying managers in its Global Opportunities Fund (GOF).
In a note to clients, Russell says it has ditched two global equity managers while taking on three new mandates for the almost NZ$3 billion GOF.
Under the changes, Harris Associates and Somerset Capital Management, which managed 12 per cent and 1.75 per cent of the GOF respectively, have been terminated. Harris managed large cap global shares for the Russell fund while Somerset looked after a small-mid cap emerging markets portfolio.
Meanwhile, Janus (Perkins) has picked up a core global equities mandate for the GOF, comprising 13 per cent of the fund, while J O Hambro and Tiburon Partners have been awarded mandates covering UK and Japanese shares respectively (weighted around 6-7 per cent of the total portfolio).
The GOF changes have “enhanced the overall fund by diversifying the alpha sources”, the Russell note says.
As well as the roster changes, Russell has also pared back the weightings of most of the remaining GOF managers with MFS, Man Numeric, Sanders Capital and Wellington Management all seeing their positions trimmed.
However, RWC Partners had its global emerging markets exposure almost doubled from 3.35 per cent to now represent 6 per cent of the GOF. Russell also boosted its in-house “active positioning strategy” – implemented by portfolio manager, Graeme Allan – to 10 per cent of the fund, compared to the previous 7.5 per cent.
According to the updated GOF fund profile, the active positioning strategies are “highly customised, internally managed and based on our own proprietary research into factor exposures (or key drivers of equity returns)”.
“They complement external managers’ portfolios and allows
Graeme to access additional sources of return not readily available from external sources,” the GOF document says.
The GOF, open to Australian and NZ investors, is structured as an Australian unit trust. In NZ the product is open to wholesale investors or retail investors can access the it “through a nominee” (typically investment platforms), according to the fund disclosure documents.
Wellington-based Implemented Investment Solutions (IIS) markets the Russell funds to a range of NZ investors.