Ignis launches global technology fund

Ignis is soft launching a global technology fund at what it believes is an attractive time to buy into the sector.

The Ignis Global Technology fund, the first big name launch of such a product in many a year, will be managed by Geoff Paton, who currently sits on the group’s US equity desk. Paton previously worked on technology funds at Abbey National and Henderson.

The fund will be a fairly concentrated portfolio, holding 40-55 stocks, and run without geographic constraints.

Paton says he classes technology stocks into two broad camps; ‘legacy’ and ‘new age companies’.

‘This year, legacy companies have struggled to perform despite, for the most part, significantly rising earnings estimates over the course of the last year,’ Paton says.

‘This has left many legacy companies such as IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Dell at very low valuations. ‘New age’ technology stocks are those exploiting profound secular trends such as cloud computing and the mobile internet.’

‘These stocks have performed well but are now beginning to experience valuation contraction to some degree. We will be particularly focused on this latter category of stocks, where there are a number of long term secular trends that will give rise to powerful investable themes and strong returns for investors.’

The fund, which will be Dublin-domiciled, will build up a 6-12 month track record before it is marketed more broadly.