The first is Alister Hibbert’s £1.96bn BlackRock European Dynamic Fund, which will see it’s A and D unit classes closed to further subscriptions from 7 November. BlackRock will launch new unit classes labelled FA and FD with the same characteristics and management fees as the existing ones, but will include an initial charge of 1% for intermediaries and of up to 5% for direct investors.
These charges will be paid back to the fund in its entirety, BlackRock said.
Once the fund reaches £2.5bn in assets, the new share classes will also be closed to further subscriptions.
Hibbert’s Luxembourg-domiciled £1.64bn BGF Continental European Flexible Fund will be closed to new and existing shareholders from 7 November.
Meanwhile, Vincent Devlin and Stefan Gries’ £56.4m European Absolute Alpha Fund, which is UK domiciled, and its Luxembourg-domiciled counterpart the £1.35bn BlackRock Strategic Funds (BSF) European Absolute Return Fund have also had capacity limits put on them.
The Luxembourg fund will be closed to new and existing shareholders from 7 November, while the UK-domiciled fund will close once it reaches £100m in assets.
Protecting investors
This is due to the combined size of both funds, which are run with the same investment strategy.
Tony Stenning, head of UK retail at BlackRock, said: “We work closely and continuously with our risk and portfolio management teams across BlackRock to ensure our funds are being optimally managed.
“We have taken the decision to introduce these changes to protect the interest of our existing investors by ensuring the funds can continue to be managed in accordance with their investment mandates.”
Devlin’s European Absolute Alpha Fund has top quartile performance over three years, returning 17.9% versus 10.6% from the sector. It was launched in 2009.
Hibbert’s European Dynamic Fund is top quartile over five and three years and second quartile over one. Over five years he has returned investors 82.29% versus 26.7% from his sector.
The graph below shows both funds’ performance against their respective benchmarks.
