The handover will occur on 1 January 2014, but Lui and Chanpongsang will work together until them to ensure a smooth transition, Fidelity said.
Lui and Chanpongsang have been colleagues for 19 years and will both be based in Hong Kong.
The Oeic has $3.2bn in AUM (as at 31 July) while the Sicav has $4.6bn in assets. Fidelity said the change in management was being implemented to support the performance and capacity for future inflows into both funds.
Lui has been at Fidelity since 1987 and took over management of Fidelity South East Asia in August 2003. It is top quartile over five years, but over shorter timeframes the fund’s performance has dipped, to third quartile over three years and one year.
Long-term winner
According to FE Analytics he has outperformed his peer group more often than not over a long track record. The graph below shows his composite performance over five years, compared with his peer group composite.
Prior to running Fidelity South East Asia Lui ran a number of other mandates, including Malaysia, Thailand and Asian Special Situations funds.
Meanwhile, Chanpongsang has been with Fidelity since 1994 and was first appointed as a portfolio manager in 1998. He first ran global communications and Thailand mandates and has more recently managed India and emerging Asia funds.
Adding alpha
FE Analytics rates him as an alpha manager who has maintained a consistently high alpha score over a proven track record in rising and falling markets.
The graph below shows his five-year performance versus the peer group composite.
John Ford, Fidelity’s chief investment officer for equities in Asia-Pacific, said: “Given the attractive long-term growth prospects of Asia and our belief that the progressive shift of economic power to these markets will encourage investors to commit more assets to the region over time, we believe clients will be best served by our two South East Asia funds being managed by two separate managers.”
The Fidelity South East Asia Fund was launched in 1984 and has returned investor a compound total return after fees of 12.7% a year over the past 29 year, the group said.
Since Lui has been at the helm the total return has been an annualised 15.4%.
Elsewhere in Fidelity, Sanjeev Shah announced his intention to step down from running another of the firm’s flagship funds – Fidelity Special Situations.
From 1 January the fund will be taken on by Alex Wright, star manager of Fidelity UK Smaller Companies.
Check back soon for further analysis of what it takes to be a special situations fund manager…
