Balfour bullish on Japan

Balfour moves Japan fund to neutral stance this year, after strong domestic exposure

Anja Balfour took over a strong Axa Framlington Japan fund from David Mitchinson in 2004 and has boosted returns further by reducing exposure to small caps during 2005 and 2006. This year however the £189m fund has not been performing as well as she would like. "Performance over the last six to nine months has been mediocre," she said. "The fund is ahead of the average vehicle in the peer group but it has done nothing spectacular. But there are funds that have done extremely badly so we have saved ourselves from that." Balfour's investment strategy is to look for growth companies at a re...