Manager Research

We carried out our annual review of the Coronation range of funds over two days in June, where we spent time with 11 of their investment team.  The outcome of the review is that we maintained the current ratings on all the funds except one.  The Coronation Global Equity Select fund was rated a Tier 3 and we have changed the rating to a Tier 2.  When we first rated the fund, our opinion was that the process, stock coverage and the team were still a work in progress.  Louis Stassen was still building the team and his co-PM Neil Padoa was relatively inexperienced to be managing a slice of a global equity portfolio.  The fund had a very high weighting to emerging markets which we believed was significantly influenced by Coronation’s long standing coverage and portfolio management of emerging market stocks, rather than a pure portfolio construction decision.  Over the past 18 months since the launch of the fund, the team has grown both in size and experience, and the investment process and approach has settled.  While there is still some development to come, the breadth of coverage has increased significantly but more important is the level of context that the portfolio managers have assimilated over the period.  It is clear that their understanding of their investment universe is vastly improved compared to when they started managing the fund, and we would expect this to continue to build into the future.