GAM Investments has renamed the GAM Star Technology strategy, managed by Mark Hawtin and his team, to GAM Star Disruptive Growth to more accurately reflect its long standing investment policy and objectives. The strategy’s benchmark will also change from the MSCI World Information Technology Index to the MSCI World Growth Index.
In recent years, many traditional technology stocks have been repositioned into ‘non-technology’ sectors by index providers, meaning some of the biggest stocks in technology, such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, are no longer defined as technology stocks from a sector perspective. As a result, pure technology indices no longer fully capture the full scope of technological developments currently disrupting industries beyond traditional technology.
The changes to the fund’s name and benchmark encompass these market changes. Specifically, they ensure the fund remains closely aligned to its well established investment process and philosophy and its aim of capturing relevant opportunities in companies and areas of the market that are benefiting from technological change. The team will continue to focus on active stock selection in order to identify growth opportunities and disruptive themes in areas such as software, cloud infrastructure, social media, advertising, retail and transportation.
Mark Hawtin, investment director at GAM, says: “Since we launched our strategy nine years ago, we have witnessed rapidly accelerating paradigm shifts of unprecedented proportions in technology. These significant developments necessitate change at every level, creating big winners and losers. We will continue to identify those companies both within and beyond the technology sector that are innovating with force and profoundly changing the way we live and work. Ultimately, we seek to position the portfolio to benefit from the generational changes that are occurring globally.”
Tim Rainsford, group head of sales and distribution at GAM, says: “Mark and his team have a wealth of experience and a proven track record of investing in growth companies that implement technologies in their day-to-day business in order to disrupt and lead the market in their respective field. These changes reflect the team’s agility, depth of knowledge and their ability to react to a changing market environment on behalf of our clients.”
