Nedgroup Investments this week collected the Raging Bull Award for the Offshore Manager of the Year for the performance of its five offshore funds on a risk-adjusted basis.
The award is made to the manager of funds that are registered in a country other than South Africa and in which you must invest in a foreign currency, but which have been approved by the South African regulator, the Financial Services Board (FSB) as suitable for South African investors.
The offshore manager of the year is determined from an average of the PlexCrown ratings its individual funds obtain for their risk-adjusted performance for three and five year periods to the end of December.
When the PlexCrown fund ratings of each manager who has FSB-registered funds are averaged, Nedgroup Investments is runner-up to ACPI, an investment manager in the United Kingdom and Jersey that has seven funds registered with the FSB for South African investors.
Four of these funds are fixed income funds investing in bonds around the world, two are global multi-asset funds investing across asset classes internationally and one is an equity fund specialising in healthcare shares.
But ACPI funds were not registered with the FSB for three years, and as a result it is not eligible for the Offshore Manager of the Year award. This award recognises the fund manager that performs consistently well across a range of funds and, in the case of the offshore manager award, the manager needs a fund in either the global asset allocation or global equity sectors.
Nedgroup Investments has five FSB-approved offshore funds registered in Ireland: three actively managed funds that invest across the different asset classes (multi-asset), one multi-asset fund that makes use of index-tracking investments and one global equity fund.
Three of the five funds had a long enough track record to qualify for PlexCrown ratings: the Global Flexible Fund obtained five PlexCrowns and won the Raging Bull Award for the best offshore multi-asset flexible fund, while the Global Cautious Fund – also a multi-asset fund but with a more conservative approach and less exposure to equities – and the Global Equity Fund obtained four PlexCrowns each.
This gave Nedgroup Investments an average score of 4.25 PlexCrowns and earned it the top position among managers of offshore funds registered with the FSB.
Another South African manager with funds registered in Ireland, Oasis, was runner-up to Nedgroup Investments in the rankings of offshore fund managers.
Oasis has six offshore funds registered with the FSB, of which four qualify for PlexCrown ratings. Its two global equity funds – one of which complies with sharia investment principles – and its multi-asset low-equity fund each obtained four PlexCrowns for their risk-adjusted returns to the end of December last year.
Oasis also manages a global real estate fund, which obtained three PlexCrowns for its risk-adjusted returns to the end of last year.