HEAD-TO-HEAD: FSSA versus T Rowe Price

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Manager review

Sophia Li and Martin Lau are the named managers for the FSSA strategy, however day-to-day management and final responsibility are in Li’s hands, Genderen said.

Li started her career at the firm in 2009 as an analyst. In January 2013, she became a comanager alongside Lau on the FSSA Greater China Growth strategy, a position she held until July 2019. In 2010, Lau and Li started managing a Japan sleeve of a newly launched global strategy, which ultimately led to the launch of this Japan equity strategy in February 2015.

Thanks to this experience, Li is well familiar with the FSSA’S approach to investing, according to Genderen. “She and Lau work closely together and all portfolio decisions are discussed prior to implementation, which gives us additional comfort,” he said.

They are part of the wider 22-member investment team, which averages 11 years of experience and seven years of firm tenure.

“However, despite our overall high conviction in this broader group, we think the Japan-dedicated resources are relatively small with only four analysts, who also lack experience,” Genderen said.

The lead manager on T Rowe Price strategy is Archibald Ciganer, who took over in December 2013. “This is his first stint as a portfolio manager, but while relatively short on management experience, he is talented and he boasts solid investment industry experience overall,” said Genderen.

This experience includes his six years as an analyst at T Rowe Price covering Japanese equities. In this period, he was trained to become a portfolio manager and managed a paper portfolio with strong results.

Ciganer has spent his entire career in Japan, which has provided him with a good understanding of the market. He receives support from 10 well-experienced analysts, who are embedded in group’s global equity research team.

Over Ciganer’s tenure, T Rowe Price has considerably boosted its dedicated Japan equity research resources, adding seven locally based analysts, according to Genderen. At the same time, only four analysts have left: three in 2014 and one in 2021, “which testifies to strong team stability”.

“We consider this growing support as a positive, but at the same time we acknowledge it takes down the average firm tenure and Ciganer has collaborated with a majority of the analysts only for a short period of time,” Genderen said.

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