Morgan Stanley soft-closes top-performing Global Brands fund

Morgan Stanley has soft-closed its Global Brands fund to retail investors in a bid to preserve the performance of the top-performing portfolio.

The fund, run by Peter Wright, William Lock and team has become increasingly popular among leading multi-managers - including Jupiter's Merlin team - in recent months. Aiming to outperform the MSCI World over a market cycle, the fund is a concentrated portfolio of global franchises and includes companies such as Nestle, Unilever and Microsoft. The Global Brands OEIC has £500m in assets, while the offshore SICAV is now some $9bn in size, prompting the group to restrict investment. "The fund is reaching capacity. We are restricting the purchase of retail share classes, but certain in...