Geffen: US not vulnerable to recession

Neptune's Robin Geffen is standing by his overweight US position as he believes the region is unlikely to fall into recession this year as long as another banking crisis is avoided.

The co-founder and manager of the £1bn Global Equity fund had nearly 30% in the US at the end of November, in the view it will escape recession, unlike Europe.

"The scene is set for a year of good, broad based equity returns provided that the euro area leaders push ahead with a joint fiscal arrangement with real ECB support and avoid a fully-fledged banking crisis," he said.

"In this scenario the US is not vulnerable to fall into a recession and the emerging market economies can look after themselves so long as the advanced world is not in a state of acute financial crisis."

Geffen also has significant exposure to China, which now amounts to 17.6% of the fund.

In Geffen's last quarterly commentary at the end of September 2011, he said the high weighting to emerging markets has detracted from short-term performance as investors fled "risky" assets during the summer sell off.

The Global Equity fund, which reached its tenth anniversary last month, is significantly underperforming the sector average. It fell 18.2% over one year to 31 December compared to the peer group average fall of 9.5%, according to Morningstar.