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First State soft closes Lau and Asante funds
Markets
by Emma Dunkley on Sep 02, 2011 at 10:44
First State Investments is soft-closing five emerging market funds including one run by Martin Lau and another by Jonathan Asante.
The firm is closing Lau’s (pictured) Greater China Growth fund, as well as the Asia Pacific Sustainability , Global Emerging Markets Sustainability , Indian Subcontinent and Asante's First State Latin America funds, to protect the interests of existing investors.
Lau’s Greater China Growth fund is a star pick in Citywire Selection while David Gait’s Indian Subcontinent fund is also listed in Selection.
However, while Asante’s Latin American fund is also to be soft closed, his Selection star pick, the large cap focused Global Emerging Markets Leaders fund , remains unaffected by the changes.
In the three years to the end of July Lau has returned 66% on his Greater China Growth fund versus a 48.3% rise in the MSCI Golden Dragon index. Asante’s Latin America fund returned 10.79% over the period, versus 4.02% returned by the MSCI EM Latin America TR USD index.
Meanwhile Gait has returned 78.3% on the Asia Pacific Sustainability fund versus a 53.14% in the MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex Japan TR USD index. He has also significantly outperformed on his India fund, returning 123.4% on the fund over the last three years versus a 57% gain in the MSCI India index.
The Global Emerging Markets Sustainability fund returned 17.07% compared to a 12.4% gain in the MSCI EM TR USD.
First State said it will credit all initial charges on these specialist funds to the relevant funds themselves for a transitional period of up to 5 April 2012.
Gary Withers, regional managing director for EMEA at First State said: ‘Over the past couple of years, inflows into our specialist Asia Pacific and Global Emerging Market (GEM) funds have grown rapidly, reflecting their exceptional long term investment performance.
‘Having monitored the situation carefully, we believe that we are nearing the point beyond which capacity issues could start affecting performance of these funds and, more specifically, restrict their ability to invest in smaller companies.
‘So that we can continue to invest efficiently for the benefit of our existing investors and stay ‘true to label’, we have decided to soft-close some of our Asia Pacific and GEM funds.’
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