Guinness Asset Management has launched its Global Innovators strategy as part of its Dublin-registered UCITS fund range.
The placement period for the UCITS Guinness Global Innovators Fund opened on 20 October and extends to 12pm on 31 October. Daily pricing begins on 3 November.
Early investors have the opportunity to buy the low cost ‘Z’ founder share class with an AMC of 0.25 per cent (OCF: 0.74 per cent) until the fund reaches GBP50m in size. The fund has no performance fees.
The strategy has been run since 2003 within the SEC-registered mutual fund range of Guinness’ US-based sister company, Guinness Atkinson Asset Management. The fund has garnered significant interest through 2014, growing from USD50m to over USD130m in size.
“We are very excited to be launching a UCITs version of our Global Innovators strategy to enable European clients to access the fund more easily. We think this could well be the best global growth fund you have never heard of,” says chairman and founder Tim Guinness. “The philosophy behind its creation in the US ten years ago was that companies with innovation in their DNA would be more likely to earn a higher return for longer. The Boston Company produced research demonstrating such an effect and now the fund performance bears this out. Not only has its performance been exceptional versus its US-listed peers, but it would rank within the top 5 of all funds in the IMA Global sector year-to-date, and over one, three, five and ten years.
“This is a remarkable achievement considering the IMA Global sector has over 250 funds in it covering everything from small cap to sector specific strategies, and not just large cap growth funds like ours. The launch also comes at an important time for the business as we move through USD1bn AUM and have taken on our first institutional segregated mandate. We hope the Global Innovators fund will be an important pillar for growing the firm to the next USD1bn.”
The fund will be co-managed by Ian Mortimer and Matthew Page, the current managers of the US-listed fund.
“It is not a tech fund,” says co- Page. “Often when investors see the word ‘innovators’ in the fund name they assume this is the case or that we are only trying to invest in very disruptive start-up companies. We actually think innovation covers a much broader spectrum and can be found across most industry sectors. We define companies in the way they are innovative as disruptive, accelerating, or incremental, and we have a wide variety of sectors and market caps represented in the portfolio. It’s important to note, though, that we only invest in companies with a market cap greater than USD500m. Ultimately we think innovative companies can outperform their peers over the long term, but we are not willing to pay any price to own these stocks.”
The fund is available on Hargreaves Lansdown Vantage for direct investors (with more platforms to follow), and on the Cofunds and Standard Life Wrap platforms (among others) for professional investors and advisers in the coming weeks.
