Six groups compete for top title

Shortlist is revealed for IW's global group of the year category

Six groups are contesting the global group of the year in the forthcoming Investment Week Fund Manager of the Year awards, with all of them well represented in the individual categories.

Fighting out the group award are Standard Life Investments, Old Mutual, Jupiter, Invesco Perpetual, New Star and M&G.

Invesco Perpetual has the most individual nominations, with seven funds shortlisted in various categories, followed by Old Mutual with six, and Jupiter, New Star, M&G, SLI and JPMorgan with four each.

The 12th annual awards ceremony will see managers recognised in 12 different individual categories plus two group awards.

As in previous years, the main panel consists of fund of funds managers Bambos Hambi of Gartmore, Gary Potter and Robert Burdett, John Chatfeild-Roberts of Jupiter and John Husselbee of North, plus Investment Week editor James Smith and Incisive Media's group editorial director Lawrence Gosling.

As before, the first stage of the judging process involves running a quants screen across the entire UK unit trust and Oeic universe, using statistics provided by Morningstar up to 31 March 2007.

Looking at each fund's percentile ranking within its own IMA sector over each of the three discrete years to 31 March, the screen gives a 20% weighting to the percentile ranking achieved during the 12 months to 31 March 2005, 30% to the period to 31 March 2006 and 40% to the year to 31 March 2007.

In addition a 10% weighting is given to the fund's three-year information ratio. This is the annualised relative return of the fund against its benchmark divided by the annualised tracking error, a measure of relative risk.

These four separate figures are added up to give a single number, with the highest possible score being 100.

Using this database, the panel then strips out any fund with less than £15m of assets or which was not in the top half of its IMA peer group over the 12 months to the same date.

This year's awards will once again be held at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday 5 July. As always, the event follows the Investment Week Markets Forum, held this year in the Radisson Edwardian Mayfair in London.