Lipper’s Jake Moeller reviews the twenty-sixth annual U.K. Lipper Fund Awards.
The stage is set for the 2015 UK Lipper Fund Awards.
This year we unveiled a fresh new look for the U.K. Lipper Fund Awards. The stylish St Paul’s Grange hotel proved a popular choice as the new City venue. A full house of over 200 participants from the U.K. and international fund management industries created an excited buzz ahead of the industry’s premier night of recognizing excellence in fund management.
Once again, our media partner for the event was fundweb and Fund Strategy magazine, with Rory Wilson—Investment Relationship Manager of Centaur—acting as co-host for the evening and presenting the group awards.
Lipper’s Head of UK & Ireland Research- Jake Moeller, opens proceedings.
New Look, New Messages
This year there was an emphasis on the history and importance of the Lipper franchise within Thomson Reuters. A short but high impact video presentation outlined the evolution of Lipper from its inception to the present day, enabling guests to better understand Lipper’s global reach.
Chris Sparke, Thomson Reuters’ Head of Market Development – AIM, provided an update on the new Eikon platform and the plans for an integrated information solution of Lipper within the business. The Eikon demonstration pods placed throughout the venue saw plenty of action later in the evening, and a live Twitter screen proved popular, with #LFAUK15 trending well throughout the night.
Christopher Sparke, Market Development Head, AIM, Thomson Reuters beats the Eikon drum.
Jake Moeller, Head of U.K. and Ireland Research for Lipper and emcee for the evening, provided insight into the active funds industry; he put forward passionate advocacy for the active fund industry and cited performance data from Lipper for Investment Management. He also outlined the fallacy of the threat of exchange-traded funds to the industry using Lipper FundFile data.
The special guest speaker for the evening was former England rugby captain Will Carling O.B.E., who provided a humorous insight into the workings of elite sports teams and outlined his pride of captaining England and the importance of recognizing winners.
Will Carling OBE addresses a full house at the UK Lipper Fund Awards 2015.
The Lipper Fund Awards Methodology
Lipper Fund Awards are based on the Lipper Leader ratings for Consistent Return. The awards are calculated using a utility function based on the effective return over multiple non-overlapping periods: three-, five-, and ten-year horizons. The calculations over multiple periods ensure that all periods in which a fund underperforms the average of its peer group are identified. In addition, Lipper uses a utility function based on behavioural finance theory to penalize periods of underperformance, with more significant weightings given to excess negative returns. This methodology ensures that the winners of the Lipper Fund Awards are funds that have provided superior consistency and relative risk-adjusted returns compared to a group of similar funds.
Excitement was high at a new venue for the 2015 UK Lipper Fund Awards.
The Winning Mutual Funds in the U.K.
Twenty single funds from the largest peer groups by assets under management in the U.K. fund universe were honoured for the three-year category during the ceremony. Seven fund houses were honoured in the three-year group awards category.
Invesco Perpetual, with four visits to the podium, shone during the evening. The company picked up three fund awards for St James’s Place Corporate Bond (Bond Pound Sterling Corporates), Invesco Perpetual High Yield (Bond Pound Sterling-High Yield), and Invesco Perpetual Global Equity Income (Equity Global Income). Schroder made two visits to the podium, with CEO Robin Stoakley collecting for Schroder ISF Japanese Opportunities (Equity-Japan) and Schroder Recovery (Equity-UK). Tom Naughton, fund manager at Prusik, collected an award for his Prusik Asian Equity Income Fund for the second consecutive year, and another previous winner—Unicorn UK Income—won in the popular Equity-UK Income sector. The mixed-asset awards were won by Threadneedle Monthly Extra Income (Aggressive), Polar Capital Income Opportunities (Balanced), and AXA Framlington Managed Income (Conservative).
Invesco Perpetual scooped the evening with 4 awards including the Overall Large Group.
In total, there were 66 winners in the three-year category, 61 winners in the five-year category, and 41 winners in the prestigious ten-year category. A full list of winners can be found here.
The Group Awards
For the group awards a large group must have at least five equity, five bond, and three mixed-asset portfolios, and a small group must have at least three equity, three bond, and three mixed-asset portfolios. There were insufficient candidates this year for the Overall Group–Small Category and the award was not presented.
T. Rowe Price, winning the Bond Small Award, was a new face, and Legg Mason Global Asset Management collected the coveted Mixed-Asset Large Award. It was left to Invesco to pick up its fourth award—for the Overall Large group—capping off its very successful evening.
Entertainer Jonathan Bremner sings in front of the live “Twitter Wall”.
Lipper takes this opportunity to congratulate all the individual sector and group award winners. A full photo gallery of the event is available here and we look forward to seeing you all again for another huge night in 2016.
