The FSA Spy market buzz – 13 December 2024
M&G’s positive outlook; Wisdom from Schroders’s podcast; Alliance Bernstein on the power of curiosity; Janus Henderson on responsible AI; China’s retirement revolution; Apple and much more.
Cédric De Fonclare joined Jupiter in 1990 and started managing the fund in 2003, according to Caquineau.
While he is the sole manager of the strategy, he gets support from the firm’s other European portfolio managers. De Fonclare also co-manages another version of the fund, which excludes UK equities.
Given De Fonclare’s experience, Caquineau believes that he has a “deep understanding of European equities and market dynamics”.
However, because he is the fund’s sole manager, the product has a key man risk.
“Only one person is making all decisions, so one weakness is that the key person risk is really high. If De Fonclare decides to leave tomorrow for whatever reason, then investors will be left with not much certainty about how the fund will be managed.
Turning to the MFS fund, Caquineau said that the 10-member team is led by Christopher Jennings, who joined the firm in 2004. Jennings is responsible for assigning the sector coverage as well as hiring new analysts.
The analyst team has been very stable. In the past 10 years, only three analysts have left the team, two of which were promoted to manage other MFS funds.
He noted that the firm ensured it had replacements to work with departing analysts for nine months “to mitigate any impact of the departure”.
Although Caquineau is impressed with how the fund is managed, he noted that one downside to having a whole team managing the fund is that the process of bringing a stock into the portfolio can be slow.
“The negative thing about the voting system is that there will be a lot of debate as some people might not be sold on a particular idea.”
M&G’s positive outlook; Wisdom from Schroders’s podcast; Alliance Bernstein on the power of curiosity; Janus Henderson on responsible AI; China’s retirement revolution; Apple and much more.
Part of the Mark Allen Group.