Constellation gets best ideas revamp

Aberdeen’s multi-manager team has restructured its £95m Constellation fund into a portfolio of 20 equally-weighted best ideas, in a bid to differentiate it from the range’s £66m Equity Managed fund.

Both funds sit in the Active Managed sector and, prior to the restructure, the only difference was the Constellation fund’s focus on boutiques.

Constellation was one of a number of multi-manager funds that came across to Aberdeen following its acquisition of Credit Suisse Asset Management.

Graham Duce, co-head of multi-manager alongside Aidan Kearney, says: “We have enhanced the construction rules on Constellation so it consists of 20 equally-weighted, high conviction ideas.

It is still a global equities portfolio with an orientation towards boutique funds, but we wanted to enhance the difference from Equity Managed, which sits in the same sector.”

Duce adds across the rest of the range, fund weightings vary between 2% and 6%, but Constellation will have 5% in each underlying holding.

Elsewhere, the team has made changes to its Asian exposure on a number of portfolios, adding the £23m Coupland Cardiff Asia Alpha fund after it moved to daily dealing.

“We have had regular meetings with the manager, Charles Dutton, and monitored his performance.

“We impressed upon Coupland Cardiff the need to have daily instead of weekly liquidity and now that has happened, we have invested. We like the dynamism of the fund, Dutton is an agile investor.”

The fund is one of the 5% positions in Constellation, and the managers have also adds it to the £71m Equity Managed and £43m Balanced Managed portfolios with 6% and 4% weightings respectively.

Elsewhere in Asia, Duce and Kearney have been long-term holders of the £743m Schroder ISF Asian Total Return fund, run by Robin Parbrook and Lee King Fuei.

They invested 18 months ago when assets were less than £100m and, while it remains on the £278m Cautious Managed vehicle, they have reduced it in Equity Managed and Balanced Managed in favour of Matthew Dobbs’ £80m Schroder Asian Alpha Plus, a new addition.