Scottish Widows Investment Partnership is to convert a number of Hill Samuel Exempt funds into a high performance Oeic fund range for sale into the intermediary and multi-manager community.
The heart of the range, which will be converted in October, will be focused UK Equity, European, North American, Japan, and Pacific Equity funds, all made up of a concentrated number of the best ideas generated by Swip's investment teams.
All of the funds are former Hill Samuel Exempt funds, which the FSA has given permission for Swip to roll into an existing Swip Oeic. The Oeic currently contains three Pan-European sub-funds, a Global SRI fund and a UK Smaller Companies fund.
In November, the retail Hill Samuel UK Smaller Companies fund, once managed by Ashton Bradbury, and the Hill Samuel UK Select Growth Trust will be merged into the focused Swip UK Smaller Companies and the focused UK Equity funds respectively.
A further 12 Hill Samuel retail funds will remain unchanged until the first half of 2003. At that point the third tranche of rationalisation will take place with many of these 12 funds being merged away.
These 12 funds include a £40m American Growth fund, a £21.8m Financials fund, a £21m US smaller companies fund, the £52m British fund, and funds in the active managed and balanced managed sectors. The remaining Hill Samuel funds also include £119m UK equity income fund, a £78m European fund, and £11m Far East fund and the £35m International fund in the global growth sector.
Each of the focused funds being created from the Hill Samuel Exempt range will hold between 30 and 50 stocks, making them far more concentrated than the Scottish Widows funds that Swip manages for its parent company. The UK Smaller Company fund and the Pacific Equity fund will hold a larger number of stocks as the risk associated with equities in those asset classes are higher. Swip has named dual fund managers on each Oeic sub-fund in order to reflect the team-based, research intensive process the group employs.
Swip's marketing director Bob Lawson said: 'Funds are definitely not associated with just one name. Even though the funds have two named managers everybody else on the team is involved in the process.'
The process is based on bottom-up stock research and has neither a growth or value bias, but analysts and managers select stocks pragmatically according to prevailing market conditions. Aimed at specialist investment advisers, private client managers and multi-manager services, all the funds carry an initial charge of 5% offering, commission of 3% with 0.5% trail, and an annual management charge of 1.5%. The funds will be marketed by Swip's sales team under head of retail sales Jacki Platt and had of intermediary sales Steve Hutton.
Contact: 0800 132 413.