Each of the new funds will be a sub-fund of the Wells Fargo (Lux) Worldwide Fund.
Both will be available to institutional and retail investors.
Equity fund
The Global Focused Equity fund is managed by Dale A. Winner, the leader of the EverKey global equity team.
The portfolio will hold 30 companies, selected using the group’s bottom-up, fundamentals-driven process. It will be benchmarked to the MSCI All Country World Index.
US small cap fund
The US Small Cap Value Fund is managed by the Stageline Value Equity team, led by Garth Nisbet, Craig Pieringer and Jeff Goverman. The fund invests in smaller US companies, with a market capitalisation of less than $2bn (£1.6bn, €1.88bn).
Companies are selected using the group’s value/contrarian investment philosophy, looking for inefficiently priced companies. The fund will be benchmarked to the Russell 2000 Value Index.
Availability
Both funds will be available in Luxembourg, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The group also has plans to register the funds for sale in Hong Kong and South Korea.
Both funds have a minimum investment level of $1,000 (USD) or equivalent value for the A Class, $1,000,000 (USD) or equivalent for the I class and $1,000 (GBP) or equivalent value for the Z Class, with total expense ratios of 1.95% (2% for the small cap fund), 1.2%, and 1.2% respectively.
Process
Winner and his team already run the Wells Capital Management Everkey International Equity fund. They have a four-point investment process aimed at identifying undervalued, non-consensus investment ideas using fundamental analysis.
There is an active portfolio and risk process on top to ensure prudent exposures and proper risk management.
The Stageline team will look for shares that fall into one of four categories:
- Neglected companies that are otherwise sound, but have been ignored by the mainstream investment community because they lack ‘sizzle’;
- Companies whose shares have become oversold due to short-term earnings difficulties;
- Small companies poised to benefit from certain macroeconomic or industry-wide trends; and
Companies experiencing a turnaround in earnings.
