Manager Research
all members of our manager research team have over ten years of investment experience.
This is a fund we have not yet formally rated, but have been tracking as one of Investec’s core offshore products in the SA market. Historically it was managed as a fund of funds where it combined a number of underlying Investec global equity strategies into a single hybrid fund (Franchise, Contrarian and Value). There was no clear investment rationale for how the fund was constructed and why the particular building blocks were used – to us it seemed more of a ‘product’ than a genuine investment offering. Even though we rated the underlying managers well we could not get comfortable that this is a sensible, well managed fund for investors. We held off rating the fund on that basis and gave the input to Investec.
Subsequently there have been a number of material changes on the fund which bodes well for clients. They have migrated the holdings towards Clyde Rossouw’s Global Franchise investment process – one which we rate highly and which compares well to global peers. To complete this migration, the fund structure will be collapsed so that it is a 100% Feeder fund into Global Franchise – this will require a successful ballot process which is currently underway and which should be completed during the course of 2015. The new fund name will be ‘Investec Global Franchise Feeder Fund’.
The fund will present an additional, credible offshore option for SA investors who are utilizing asset swap capacity to access offshore investment returns. We will provide further updates on this fund as the transition progresses.
Changes to the Investec Global Opportunity Equity Fund of Funds
3 Jun 2015