HEAD-TO-HEAD: Allianz versus Schroders

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Manager review

The Allianz fund is led by the experienced Thorsten Winkelmann, who is highly regarded in the industry and heads up the 12-strong Allianz global growth team, which was formed in 2020 by the merger of the European equity growth team, led by Winkelmann, and the global equity growth team.

While Winkelmann’s team has been stable historically, the combined team lost four members over a 12-month time frame around the time of the merger.

Overall, van Genderen reckons that the team has good pedigree in the European market but is a bit lighter in comparison in a global context.

“For this global strategy, we think the resources dedicated to the US market are still relatively light so perhaps still suitable for the strategy but compared with other strategies we rate highly in this space, we consider the resources light on the US. That’s still something we need to get more comfortable with before we can say a higher conviction in this team in a global context,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Schroders fund has undergone some turnover of late as one of the co-managers, Katherine Davidson, left in July and was replaced by Scott MacLennan.

Although MacLennan has less experience than Davidson, he comes with good pedigree and his co-manager, Charles Somers, has more than two decades experience at the UK asset manager.

“We think she has been adequately replaced by a PM [portfolio manager] that previously was on the European sustainable fund in Schroders. He is slightly less experienced but still we think that he is a solid investor and more importantly Charles Somers was previously already on the fund and remained at the helm and we hold him in high regard as an investor,” said van Genderen.

The Schroders team also benefits from being able to leverage the global analyst team, which employs more than 100 analysts in 11 countries throughout the world and is seen as a distinguishing factor.

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