Winnersrationale

Lazard Asset Management (Lazard) has been named Asian Private Banker’s Best Fund Provider – Global Equity for comprehensively demonstrating an ability to capture long-term return and short-term outperformance despite global equities markets’ multiple uncertainties in 2022.

The Lazard Global Equity Franchise Fund is actively managed and seeks long-term, defensive returns by investing globally in various “economic franchise” companies. The fund invests in listed companies which Lazard believes provide a combination of predictable earnings and significant competitive advantages.

In order to provide lower volatility, higher alpha potential and enhanced diversification against the challenging backdrop, the Lazard Global Equity Franchise Fund defines an “economic franchise” as a business that has historically shown a proven ability to generate unleveraged returns, at or above its cost of capital, for long periods, and uses this definition as part of its stock selection criteria for the fund

The Global Equity Franchise team employs a benchmark-agnostic, value-driven investment process which aims to protect against capital loss and generate strong risk-adjusted returns. As a value manager, it embraces fundamental analysis to support a bottom-up stock selection style.

Having worked together for over 14 years, the portfolio managers have achieved a simple, transparent and disciplined investment process.

The Global Equity Franchise Fund has secured an 81.4% gain for investors since its inception. While the MSCI World Index dropped 15.1% in the first eight months of 2022, the fund convincingly outperformed by merely dipping 2.5%. At the end of August 2022, it had US$600 million in AUM.

The consistency of the fund’s commitment to clients and investors has been built on the strength of solid portfolio management, and the support from the pre-sales and after-sales teams, especially when markets turned volatile during the pandemic. In 2022, Lazard Asset Management maintained its distribution network with 12 private banks in Asia.
In addition, another of the firm’s global equity teams offers the Lazard Global Thematic Equity Fund, a long-only, style-agnostic investment discipline focusing on long-term investment returns. As a wider equity strategy provider, the firm’s thematic team places emphasis on theme diversification with a strong discipline on valuation in order to mitigate the risk of pursuing overpriced securities, simply for its thematic fit.

For these reasons, Lazard Asset Management wins Best Fund Provider – Global Equity in Asian Private Banker’s 2023 Asset Management Awards for Excellence.

Winnersrationale

A well-known name on the street, the T. Rowe Price Funds SICAV – Global Focused Growth Equity Fund has enjoyed an impeccable track record of nearly two decades and throughout multiple market cycles.

Bottom-up fundamental analysis powers the fund’s stock selection process and has long been its major source of alpha over the past years. The fund strategy has a tilt to growth investing — broadly defined so as to identify companies with improving fundamentals and growth prospects over a time horizon of 12 to 24 months.

The fund allows for the flexibility to add in contrarian perspectives and embraces some extent of market uncertainties. That means, for instance, in the current environment where cyclicals are outperforming, it benefits from its allocation to cyclical sectors such as financials. The approach enables the fund to go beyond traditional growth names for companies that can generate long-term sustainable growth. It is this unique approach that distinguishes the fund from many of its global equity peers.

Notable calls in 2021 that contributed to the fund’s outperformance include the bullish stance taken on Charles Schwab — the company’s earnings power was expected to receive a significant tailwind from the acquisition of TD Ameritrade in October 2020. The stock has consistently been generating alpha for the fund throughout the first two quarters of 2021.

The fund’s proven track record has won it a five-star rating by Morningstar. As of 31 August 2021, the fund had delivered a one-year after-fee total return of 31.29%, beating the MSCI world benchmark by 2.64%. Its calendar year performance in 2020 was 49.83%, versus the benchmark return of 16.25%. The fund integrates ESG factors as part of its investment process alongside other factors such as financial, macroeconomic and valuation.

T. Rowe Price has been named Asian Private Banker’s Best Fund Provider – Global Equity for 2022.

Winners rationale

Very few possess the track record of Capital Group’s New Perspective strategy — with its resilient investment philosophy that has been through multiple market cycles with resounding success. This time-tested approach particularly shone through during the market sell-off in early 2020 and the subsequent recovery.

The group makes this strategy available to Asian investors as a Luxembourg-domiciled fund (UCITS): Capital Group New Perspective Fund (LUX), which is managed by the same team and follows the same investment approach as the strategy. The primary objective of the New Perspective Fund (LUX) is to achieve long-term growth of capital by investing in common stocks of companies located around the world.

The fund’s ability to consistently deliver strong results was even more pronounced on a year-to-date basis as at 31 August 2020. Against the unsettled markets of 2020, the fund returned +18.8% before fees, generating an excess return of more than +14% compared with the index, which rose +4.7% over the same period. The fund returned +17.5%, net of highest management fees and expenses for the B share class.

It was able to consistently deliver on those objectives by focusing on opportunities driven by changes in global trade patterns as well as economic and political relationships. The focus on ‘change’ was particularly valuable in an era of digital disruption. Through rigorous, bottom-up research, the Capital Group identified strong multinationals that stand to benefit from global secular change. This was made possible by the investment team’s flexibility to pursue opportunities anywhere in the world — rather than having a traditional domicile focus. Its ‘new geography’ approach concentrates on revenue exposure. Though this may lead to geographical differences — when compared with the benchmark MSCI ACWI index — it enabled portfolio managers to search from a more diverse pool of strong multinationals that offer growth and resilience.

Notable investments included e-commerce platform provider Shopify and China-based biotechnology specialist BeiGene. Further evidence of the fund’s success in identifying the champions of tomorrow was its investment in on-demand media streaming giant Netflix. This company has been held since the fund first launched in 2015, when its market cap was approximately US$49 billion as at 31 December 2014. Netflix’s market cap was almost US$230 billion as at January 6, 2021. The fund has remained invested in the company throughout this period and it was a top-10 position in the portfolio as at 31 August 2020.

That foresight helped the Capital Group stand out from its peers and retain its title.

For its ability to pick stocks far ahead-of-the-curve and a flexible investment philosophy, Capital Group has been selected as Asian Private Banker’s Best Fund Provider – Global Equity.

Winners rationale

In sharp contrast to 2018 — when global equities buckled under pressure — 2019 saw an encouraging rebound in stocks across the board. Through rigorous, bottom-up stock selection, Capital Group once again showcased its strength as a long-term equity investor, continuously achieving both consistent growth of capital and income for clients.

Many strategies in the market claim to have the necessary attributes or characteristics to be able to withstand the test of times, but very few possess the track record of Capital Group’s flagship fund — New Perspective strategy — which has over 45 years of experience navigating multiple market cycles with resounding success.

In terms of results over the past 12 months (in US dollar terms), despite the brutal sell-off in global equities in the fourth quarter of 2018, Capital Group New Perspective Fund (LUX) was still able to trend up by 1.9% by the end of August 2019, compared to MSCI ACWI’s -0.3%.

The distinctive investment process of Capital Group made the asset manager stand out amongst peers. Comprising seven portfolio managers with diverse backgrounds, ages, and investment approaches and styles, the team enabled the fund to embed both high conviction and diversity in its portfolio construction, as the seven managers managed their dedicated sleeves within the portfolio while collaborating on asset allocation decisions.

Investing is more than alpha generation; it involves risk management as well. Capital Group took this one step further by not only looking at investment risk, but also operational and strategy-level risks. The team designed a customised risk framework to provide positioning, scenario analysis and risk analytics for portfolios. Further, it took ESG issues into consideration in an integrated manner, alongside other investment indicators.

Capital Group’s success could not be achieved without a dedicated business development team. To support the growing Asian business, the firm made tremendous efforts to deepen its intermediary business and now has four senior intermediary managers in both Hong Kong and Singapore.

Backed by strong investment and distribution teams, Capital Group delivered consistent outperformance and fund inflow with high-quality servicing, thus becoming the well-deserved recipient of Best Fund Provider – Global Equity.

Winners rationale

In a tumultuous year that saw global equities buckle under the pressure of trade-related tensions, Capital Group defied these challenging circumstances by forging ahead in Asia with its mission to deliver industry-leading global equity funds to private banking and wealth management clients.

Indeed, as part of its efforts to ramp up its international business over the past few years, Capital Group introduced some of the firm’s highest performing and longest-running funds — hitherto only available to clients in the United States — to the Asia region. Already, the fund house’s global equity strategies are on the platforms of three major private banks and have experienced healthy net inflows from Asia’s private clients.

A key offering is the Capital Group New Perspective Fund (LUX), which kickstarted the fund house’s Asian wealth management business. A resilient bottom-up strategy that identifies global growth and innovation, the fund has outperformed the MSCI All Country World Index in all rolling three-year periods over its 45-year lifespan, proving its ability to consistently seize the opportunities offered up by globalisation.

Having grown its assets under management to over US$3.5 billion as at December 2018, the fund has contributed materially to the company’s Asian AUM, which has risen to US$20 billion from US$13 billion over the past year and a half.

Meanwhile, to spearhead the continued growth of its Asian business, Capital Group has expanded its team, which currently consists of four business development managers dedicated to its intermediaries business across Hong Kong and Singapore. These managers are further supported by a team of investment specialists, product management, business management, and marketing professionals.

Backed by a US$1.8 trillion1 global business committed to the private banking and intermediary channel, a time-tested strategy that has weathered all sorts of down markets, and glowing approval from its private banking partners, Capital Group is Asian Private Banker’s Best Fund Provider – Global Equity for 2019.

^{1. As at 30 June 2018. Source: Capital Group}