Marlborough European Multi Cap fund gets a name change
26 November 2021 – Marlborough Fund Managers has announced two changes to its fund names, effective from today.
Firstly, all Marlborough funds will now have the prefix ‘IFSL’, inserted before the fund name. This is to reflect the fact that IFSL, a company within the Marlborough Group, will be the Authorised Corporate Director (ACD) for the range of Marlborough funds. Previously, Marlborough acted as the ACD, but it has been decided that its business should be transferred and brought together within IFSL. By bringing the two businesses together, the Marlborough group believes it can achieve greater efficiency and focus for its fund governance and operations functions.
Secondly, Marlborough European Multi Cap, which is on the Chelsea Core Selection, will be re-named IFSL Marlborough European Special Situations. The change will not affect the management or the investment process behind the fund, which will continue in exactly the same way as it has done since David Walton was appointed as the fund manager in 2013.
Commenting on the name change, manager David Walton said: “While we do invest in companies across the market cap spectrum, the fund has a strong bias to small-cap and micro-cap stocks. That’s because we believe many of these smaller companies have significant growth potential, but they’re ignored by most investors simply because of their size.
“However, this preference for smaller companies means the fund’s holdings aren’t evenly distributed across the market cap spectrum, which is what we believe some investors might expect based on the existing name.
“In the interests of clarity, we’ve therefore decided to change the name to Marlborough European Special Situations. We believe that ‘Special Situations’ more accurately reflects our investment philosophy and process, which is using primarily bottom-up stock-picking to identify undervalued companies with strong growth potential.
“This ‘Special Situations’ approach naturally leads us to find a greater number of opportunities at the lower end of the market cap spectrum. That’s because of the sheer number of smaller companies and the fact that there are fewer analysts researching them.
“In addition, the new name reflects the fact that the fund is a stablemate of Marlborough Special Situations, which is in the Investment Association’s UK All Companies sector. There are similarities in the broad investment philosophy of the two. They both use a bottom-up stock-picking approach and have a bias to smaller companies.
“The fund will remain in the Investment Association’s Europe ex-UK sector and while the name’s changing to increase clarity for investors, we’ll carry on doing what we’ve always done, which is looking for companies with quality management and above-average growth potential that are on a valuation that’s cheap relative to the prospects for the business.”