Citywire Americas brings together the most important news in the investment universe of funds and UCITS as published in Citywire's worldwide publications.
As part of the review of the fund offering, Fidelity International will merge six funds to better meet evolving customer needs, reports Citywire Selector.
The company is increasing its number of income solutions, sustainability products, absolute and total return products and investment themes, while at the same time focusing its broader range of funds on clear goals in key market segments.
Sustainable focus
Two of the company's funds are to be integrated into its sustainable strategies.
The Fidelity Selection Internationale fund will be merged with the Sustainable Global Equity fund on September 20.
The Selection Fund manager Nick Peters will remain with Fidelity as part of its solutions and multi-asset team.
The absorbing Sustainable Global Equity fund is managed by Aditya Shivram and seeks a dividend-based total return by investing in high quality sustainable companies with strong ESG characteristics at reasonable valuations.
In the meantime, the Fast US fund will join the Sustainability US Equity fund on December 6th.
Portfolio management responsibilities will be transferred from Aditya Khowala to Lead Manager Alex Gold and Co-Manager Matt Egerton.
Khowala will remain with the firm and will focus on its US $ 1.6 billion US multi-cap growth strategy.
Changes in mixed assets
Fidelity will also be making changes to its mixed asset range.
The Fidelity Patrimoine and Fidelity Allocation Flexible funds will join the Global Multi Asset Income (Hedged) Fund on November 22nd.
Both of the merged funds were managed by Peters. The absorbing fund is overseen by senior portfolio manager Eugene Philalithis, co-manager George Efstathopoulos and senior analyst Becky Qin.
The investment objective of the Income Fund is changing as it seeks natural income of around 5% per year over a market cycle with low volatility and with a strong focus on reducing capital losses.
Changes in emerging market bonds and UK stocks
Another merger is the Emerging Markets Inflation-linked Bond Fund, which will be incorporated into the Emerging Market Local Currency Debt Fund on September 20.
The portfolio managers remain unchanged, with Paul Greer as lead and Eric Wong and Marton Huebler as co-portfolio managers.
The team's investment process remains unchanged, drawing on input from the team of government research, quantitative research and specialist EM traders to build a portfolio of active investment positions in the EM currency and rates markets.
The final strategy to be streamlined is the Fast UK Fund, which will merge with the UK Special Situations Fund on December 6th.
The Special Situations Fund is managed by Alex Wright and Jonathan Winton who will continue to focus on attractively valued stocks entering a period of positive change.
Fast UK fund managers Aruna Karunathilake and Karan Singh remain with the company and focus on their US $ 675 million UK Select strategy.
Amundi launches emerging markets ETF that excludes fossil fuels
Amundi has expanded its responsible investing ETF offering with a new emerging market strategy that excludes fossil fuels, reports Citywire Selector.
The Amundi Index MSCI EM Asia SRI – Ucits ETF DR is offered at a current annual fee of 0.25% and is listed on Xetra.
The passive strategy offers broad exposure to emerging Asian countries with high ESG ratings and excludes those with negative environmental and social impacts, such as fossil fuel extraction.
Fannie Wurtz, Head of Distribution and Wealth Division, and Head of Amundi ETF, Indexing and Smart Beta, said: ‘We believe that ETFs play an important role in democratizing ESG. With this latest addition to our offering, we are enabling all investors to integrate ESG into their portfolios at low cost. ‘
With the new fund, Amundis SRI-filtered stock offering without fossil fuels now covers all major geographic regions of the stock market.
Amundi's ETF, indexing and smart beta unit is one of the company's key strategic businesses, managing more than € 184 billion in assets. The unit currently offers over 145 ETFs.