Rensburg, Dalton, SVM and JO Hambro Capital Management fighting it out with 2006 winner Neptune for recognition as this year's specialist group
Five of the industry's smaller players are contesting the specialist group of the year in the forthcoming Investment Week Fund Manager of the Year awards.
While groups nominated in the global category have to run a fund in all the major regions and asset classes, the specialist award is designed to recognise excellence among the industry's many boutiques and smaller companies.
Nominated this year are Rensburg, Dalton Strategic Partners, SVM, JO Hambro Capital Management and the 2006 winner Neptune.
Fighting out the global group award are Standard Life Investments, Old Mutual, Jupiter, Invesco Perpetual, New Star and M&G.
These larger players are all well represented in the individual categories. Invesco Perpetual is leading the pack with seven nominations, followed by Old Mutual with six.
The 12th annual awards ceremony will also see managers recognised in 12 different individual categories.
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.
The asset allocator award has a seperate judging panel, made up of Richard Romer-Lee from OBSR, consultant Graham Hooper and Rowan's Tim Cockerill.
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. All figures are bid to bid with net income reinvested at ex-dividend, not payment date.
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 as of 31 March 2007 or was not in the top half of its IMA peer group over the 12 months to the same date.
On the group category, to be eligible for Global Group of the Year, a fund house has to have at least one UK Equity, one European, one Asia or Japan fund, one North America and one bond fund. The process takes the quants scores for each fund in a group's range with assets above £15m and divides it by the number of eligible funds to come up with an overall quants figure.
This year's Investment Week Fund Manager of the Year Awards will once again be held at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday 5 July 2007. As always, the event follows, the Investment Week Markets Forum, held this year in the Radisson Edwardian Mayfair in London.
Speakers confirmed so far include Scott McKenzie from Martin Currie, Ian McVeigh from Jupiter and Axa Framlington's Roger Whiteoak.
