Martin Currie's McKenzie, Jupiter's McVeigh and Axa Framlington's Whiteoak among fund managers to speak at this year's July Markets Forum
Managers including Scott McKenzie from Martin Currie, Ian McVeigh from Jupiter and Axa Framlington's Roger Whiteoak will speak at this year's July Markets Forum, held before the 2007 Investment Week Fund Manager of the Year awards.
McKenzie will highlight the scarcity of yield in many equity income funds against the needs of the market, while Whiteoak will argue that there remain plenty of opportunities in the small-cap market.
The July Markets Forum event will be held this year in the Radisson Edwardian Mayfair in London and also features BlackRock bond manager Daniel McKernan, JP Morgan's Ian Henderson and Old Mutual's Stephen Snowden.
Following the Markets Forum, the 12th annual awards ceremony will also see managers recognised in 12 different individual categories.
Five of the industry's smaller players are contesting the specialist group of the year, with Rensburg, Dalton Strategic Partners, SVM, JO Hambro Capital Management fighting it out with 2006 winner Neptune.
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.
Fighting out the global group award are Standard Life Investments, Old Mutual, Jupiter, Invesco Perpetual, New Star and M&G.
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. 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.
NOMINATIONS
UK Growth
Old Mutual UK Select Mid Cap
Standard Life UK Opportunities
Dimensional UK Value
Schroder UK Mid 250
Alllianz RCM UK Mid Cap
Saracen Growth
UK Smaller Companies
Old Mutual UK Select Smaller Companies
Standard Life UK Smaller Companies
JPM UK Smaller Companies
M&G Smaller Companies
Invesco Perpetual UK Smaller Companies Equity
Old Mutual UK Select Smaller Companies (Dublin) - (offshore)
Europe
Tilney European Growth
Henderson European Smaller Companies
Invesco Perpetual European Smaller Companies
Montanaro European Smaller Companies (offshore)
Swip Pan-European Equity
New Star European Growth
Far East
First State Asia Pacific
Martin Currie Asia Pacific
Baillie Gifford Pacific
First State Greater China
AIG Southeast Asia Small Cap (offshore)
Axa Rosenberg Pacific ex-Japan Small Cap Alpha (offshore)
Emerging
Jupiter Emerging Europe
Credit Suisse European Frontiers
JPM Emerging Markets
Aberdeen Emerging Markets
Scottish Widows Latin American
Morgan Stanley Sicav Latin American (offshore)
Specialist
JPM Natural Resources
Aberdeen Property Share
Epic Insurance & General
Henderson Pan-European Property Equities (offshore)
Merrill LIIF World Mining (offshore)
Baring Hong Kong China (offshore)
Fidelity China Focus (offshore)
UK Equity Income
Invesco Perpetual Income
New Star UK Strategic Income
Invesco Perpetual High Income
Standard Life UK Equity High Income
Henderson Global Care Income
Jupiter Monthly Income
US
M&G American
JPM US
Old Mutual North American Equity
Martin Currie North America
Investec American
Findlay Park US Smaller Companies (offshore)
UK Corporate Bond
Old Mutual Corporate Bond
Aegon Sterling Bond
M&G Corporate Bond
Royal London Corporate Bond
Standard Life Select Income
Japan
Melchior Japan Opportunities
Gam Star Japan (offshore)
Investec GSF Japan Equity (offshore)
AIG Japan New Horizon (offshore)
Invesco Perpetual Japan
Gilt, Global & Other Bond
Invesco Perpetual Monthly Income Plus
Thames River High Income (offshore)
Baillie Gifford High Yield Bond
Invesco Perpetual European High Yield
F&C Maximum Income
Artemis High Income
Asset Allocator
Old Mutual Select Managed
Midas Balanced Growth
Jupiter Fund of Investment Trusts
McInroy & Wood Smaller Companies
Midas Balanced Income
Jupiter Merlin Income
New Star Global Strategic Capital
M&G Offshore Global Leaders (offshore)
Global group
Standard Life Investments
Jupiter
Old Mutual
M&G
Invesco Perpetual
New Star
Specialist group of the year
Dalton Strategic Partnership
JOHCM
SVM
Neptune
Rensburg.
