Manager Research

As we previously noted, the Laurium Equity Prescient Fund has now merged with the newly launched Nedgroup Investments SA Equity Fund. The ballot process has been successful and the Laurium fund has now been fully integrated into the Nedgroup SA Equity Fund.

The fund will be managed by Laurium’s portfolio management team of Murray Winckler, Gavin Vorwerg, Junaid Bray and Dwayne Dippenaar. There will be no changes to the way the portfolio is managed or implemented.

This merger marks the beginning of a broader rationalization of the Nedgroup Investments South African equity range, which will see the Nedgroup Investments Growth and Value Funds eventually merge into the SA Equity Fund as well. Currently the Value Fund is managed by Foord.

Ballot letters have been issued to incumbent investors in the Value and SA Equity funds to seek approval of the proposed merger. Once this process is complete and approved, Laurium will engage with Foord to develop a strategy to align the two portfolios. The ballot process is expected to be completed by the beginning of June 2021, at which point Laurium will take over management of the Value fund.

Current illiquid holdings in the Value fund are expected to be sold before the merger date and Laurium and Foord will engage one another to see that this process is conducted in an efficient manner.

The Nedgroup Investments Growth fund is already managed by Laurium according to the same process as the Laurium Equity Fund. Laurium took over this fund from Electus last year after Electus’s management announced that it was closing the business in June due to declining AUM. 

A consequence of this merger is that the new Nedgroup SA Equity fund will adopt the relatively good track record of the Laurium Equity fund, and discard the poor long term track record of the Nedgroup Growth fund.  This effectively removes the old track record from the public domain and is a convenient change for Nedgroup.

This process is set to be completed by the beginning of June 2021.

As a result of these changes and the fact that the Laurium Equity Prescient Fund no longer exists, we have withdrawn the Tier 2 rating on this fund.

We have not yet rated the Nedgroup SA Equity Fund and we will wait until the merger is complete before we review the fund.