Martin Currie’s GEM fund opens to investors

Martin Currie's Luxembourg-based Global Emerging Markets UCITS IV-compliant Sicav is now open to retail investors.

The fund’s manager Kim Catechis, who is supported by co-managers Alastair Reynolds and Divya Mathur, explains that this is a 40–60-stock, multi-cap portfolio of Martin Currie’s best investment ideas and is “unconstrained at a country and sector level.” Its benchmark is the MSCI Emerging Markets index.

Commenting on the launch, Catechis said, “We believe that despite the current global economic headwinds, the long-term investment case for emerging-market equities remains entirely intact – and the opportunity set remains vast. Our focus continues to be on individual companies with distinct competitive advantages, resilient balance sheets and well-founded growth.

“Developing countries such as China, Brazil and India do face an ongoing battle to balance growth, inflation and credit availability, and the market has clearly taken a more bearish stance lately. But, in reality, there has been very little change in fundamentals, and this is reflected in our investment positioning.”

The team were recruited from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership in 2010 and between them they are fluent in many of the emerging-market languages which they believe gives them an edge in terms of useful insights into the culture, political and economic climate of the countries they visit.

The fund’s annual management charge is 1.5% and registered for sale in the UK, across Europe and in Hong Kong. It is also available in US dollar, sterling and euro share classes.

www.martincurrie.com