Managers Luke Newman and Ben Wallace raised the annual management charge on the institutional share class to 5% from 1% in November 2011 in an attempt to stem inflows before they reached £2bn. At the time they had £1.8bn under management in the whole strategy.
Speaking at the time, Simon Hillenbrand, head of UK retail said the move was taken to protect performance and to ensure the strategy remained nimble.
Newman said: “The past two years have continued to be turbulent for markets but the fund has not lost money for investors. Given its track record, success in preserving capital in difficult environments and generating uncorrelated returns in a variety of equity markets we now feel it’s appropriate to re-open it. “
The increased charge has now been removed as the Oiec’s AUM has fallen to £164m from £368m at the time of soft closure, and the Sicav is down to £174m from £326m over the same period.
The performance of the UK Oeic over the past year is shown in the graph below.
It currently has 17.9% of its assets invested in the financials sector, and HSBC is its top holding. It has outperformed its benchmark over both one and three years, according to FE Trustnet data.
