With a range of Luxembourg Sicavs, the asset management arm of Deutsche Bank is given the go-ahead to return to the UK market
DWS Investments has received authorisation to distribute 10 of its Luxembourg Sicav funds in the UK including a Chinese equities and a convertible bond fund.
The move marks a return to the UK market for the asset management arm of Deutsche Bank since its range of UK-registered funds were sold to Aberdeen in 2005.
Others in the range will include Top 50 Asia, Bric Plus, Africa, Global Agribusiness, New Resources and Climate Change.
In addition, the group has a range of four absolute return funds with daily liquidity, two of which will be available to UK investors - Alpha Opportunities and Alpha Strategy.
Alpha Strategy is a synthetic money-market portfolio, combined with ideas in foreign exchange and bond markets, while Alpha Opportunities will adopt a similar approach but will also invest in equities.
The Climate Change fund, launched in May 2007, invests in companies that are active in sectors involving CO2 and energy-efficency and includes large-cap stocks such as GE and Siemens in its portfolio alongside specialist businesses such as Solarworld and First Solar.
New Resources, launched in February 2006, has a bias to growth companies from the commodity, energy and utility sectors, while Global Agribusiness invests in companies that are either in the agricultural sector or profit from the peer group and was launched in November 2006.
The Africa fund, launched in July 2008, is the smallest of the portfolios with assets of E6.2m as at the end of March, in contrast to Bric Plus, launched in March 2005, which is E1.2bn in size. The Top 50 Asia, which has nearly a seven-year track record, has AUM of E213m.
DWS Invest Alpha Strategy has been running since August 2004 and achieved a total return of 3.0% compared to the iBoxx Sovereign Eurozone Index, which returned 4.4% over the period to the end of March.
The higher-risk Opportunities fund, launched in June 2007, has returned 2.3% since launch compared to the MSCI Index, which has lost 30.2% over the period to 31 March.
York Naumann, DWS's senior sales manager for UK intermediary sales says: "We do not see any point in trying to compete in the UK with a range of funds similar to the many that are already available.
"The market has enough choice in sectors such as UK equities but we believe we do have something to add in alternative sectors where we have a very strong reputation and have committed a lot of resources to it."
All funds will be prefixed DWS Invest and will offer sterling, euros and US dollars share classes. There is no minimum investment in the retail share class and charges range from 0.5% to 2% AMC, with an initial fee of between 0% and 5%.
