Global Equities

Former Neptune manager Nicola Muirhead has joined River & Mercantile Asset Management to work on its global equity team.

Nick Hamilton, head of global equity products at Invesco Perpetual, is hoping to boost the "mediocre" performance of the group's £1bn Global Equity fund by positioning less defensively and adding to US exposure.

Investec is bringing its $463m Global Franchise fund onshore as it expands its specialist equity range, Investment Week understands.

The managers of the Kennox Strategic Value fund have moved to add several new holdings to their concentrated portfolio in a bid to take advantage of market volatility.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch's latest 'equity hitchhiker's guide to the global galaxy' has outlined a range of prospective trades for investors in the coming months.

It has been a monumental ten years for equity and bond markets, with the euphoria of the first half matched by the despair seen on the faces of traders in the second half, after one of the worst financial meltdowns ever seen.

Microsoft has reported a quarterly net loss of $492m, its first in 26 years as a public company, but it and Google helped ease concerns over the resilience of the tech sector as sales rose despite overall.

The majority of global equity funds underperformed the market in the first half of 2012, with many managers wrong-footed by the US outperformance.

China's benchmark equity index has fallen to its lowest level for three and a half years, as investors continue to fret over the impact of the global slowdown.

FMF