HEAD-TO-HEAD: Blackrock vs Fidelity

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Manager review

The lead manager for the Blackrock fund is Michael Fredericks. He is supported by co-manager Justin Christofel. The two have been managing the fund since 2013. Both have also been responsible for the firm’s US-focused multi-asset income fund since 2011, according to Mottola.

Another co-manager, Alex Shingler, joined the team in 2015 and previously managed fixed income assets for Blackrock, he added.

The three co-managers make the asset-allocation decisions, but they collaborate with 15 different teams that run the separate sleeves for the fund.

The Blackrock fund invests in sleeves managed by its in-house managers. But the investments are made into model portfolios developed by each of the in-house managers, Mottola explained.

Turning to the Fidelity fund, the lead manager is Eugene Philalithis, who has been with the firm’s solutions team since 2007, which is part of the firm’s 38-member multi-asset team.

Philatithis, who has been managing the fund since 2013, is supported by two co-managers: George Efstathopoulos and Chris Forgan. Forgan recently joined the firm in March this year from Janus Henderson and replaced Nick Peters, who has stepped back as a co-manager to focus on multi-asset growth strategies, according to Mottola.

The co-managers are responsible for the Fidelity fund’s top-down allocation, while the different investment sleeves are managed by the firm’s in-house managers’ own funds (unlike the Blackrock product, which instead invests in in-house model portfolios for the various sleeves), Mottola said.

Around 80% of the funds the Fidelity product invests in are managed in-house and implemented directly without an additional fee layer, Mottola said. He adding that ETFs and non-Fidelity funds may be used in case the co-managers don’t find a suitable in-house strategy.

“We think both the Blackrock and Fidelity teams have sufficient resources to run the funds. Both portfolio manager teams are experienced and both use in-house specialist teams to run different sleeves of the fund,” he said.

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