HEAD-TO-HEAD: Fidelity vs MFS

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“Both funds have a large investment team to conduct bottom-up analysis. Fidelity has 40 analysts in total, while MFS has 10,” Caquineau said.

Victoire de Trogoff has been the only manager of the Luxembourg-domiciled Fidelity fund since November 2012, and backed by about 40 sector equity analysts.

But she has started to manage the same strategy for the French version since January 2007, Caquineau noted. With 19 years of industry experience, de Trogoff joined Fidelity in Paris back in 2002 as country analyst.

“We also like the fact that she invests in her own fund, although she is not required to do so,” which helps to align her own interests with those of fund investors, he noted.

Analysts for the MFS fund are actually more important than Gabrielle Gourgey, the named portfolio manager, he noted.

“She is not making any investment decisions, but she chairs the weekly analyst meeting and provides risks oversight and cash flow facilitation.”

In this approach of no single portfolio manager, “we can avoid the key-man risk. If one analyst leaves, the fund still has nine of them”.

Still, he pointed out that the team is experiencing some turnover. For example, the analyst covering the banking sector will transition to portfolio management in early 2017 and he will not be replaced.

“While this is not ideal, we note that MFS has usually done a good job of handling such transitions without impairing stock selection,” he added.

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