Invesco Perpetual leads the way with seven funds shortlisted for the Investment Week Fund Manager of the year awards while Old Mutual follows close behind with six nominations
Invesco Perpetual is leading the pack in terms of nominations for this year's Investment Week Fund Manager of the Year Awards, with seven funds shortlisted in various categories.
Old Mutual has six funds nominated, followed by Jupiter, New Star, M&G and JPMorgan with four each.
Meanwhile, smaller groups competing in various categories in this year's Investment Week Fund Manager of the Year Awards include Saracen, McInroy and Wood and Findlay Park.
Saracen's UK Growth fund, managed by Jim Fisher and Julian Fosh, is competing against several top-performing mid-cap offerings in the UK category. Multi-time nominee Findlay Park US Smaller Companies, run by a four-strong investment team which includes founders James Findlay and Charles Park, is once again recognised among the American achievers.
The 12th annual awards ceremony will see managers recognised in 11 different individual categories plus two group awards, with the shortlists for the latter to be announced in due course.
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 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.
