Revealed: The new GARS funds on the launchpad at SLI

Standard Life Investments is preparing to roll out a number of regional variants of its £18bn Global Absolute Return Strategies (GARS) fund, as well as a simplified version of the vehicle, Investment Week can reveal.

The new funds will include a multi-asset emerging markets fund, other geographical variants of GARS, as well an equity and fixed-income focused offering that strips out some of the fund's directional and relative value strategies. The group is also looking at a higher volatility GARS vehicle as part of its expansion plans. All new products will be run by the group's multi-asset team, which last week saw founder member Euan Munro exit to become CEO at Aviva Investors. SLI is pressing ahead with its plans for a raft of new GARS launches despite Munro's departure, believing the additi...