Jeffrey Lum and Christopher Wong manage the fund. Based in Singapore, the managers are experienced market practitioners and they aim to identify changes early before the markets have discounted them.

The fund aims to provide investors with long term capital growth from an actively managed portfolio of securities, primarily in the Pacific Basin region, excluding Japan. In practice, the managers aim to stay in the top deciles within the IMA Asia Pacific ex Japan peer group universe over the medium term with lower downside volatility.

Performance of  Marlborough Far East Growth fund over 3-yrs



Source: Financial Express Analytics

Marlborough Fund Managers have subcontracted the management of this fund to ARN Investment Partners. The lead manager is Jeffrey Lum and he works very closely with his colleague, Christopher Wong. They have worked together for many years dating back to their days at LGT Asset Management in the 1990s.

The managers believe that a holistic approach to investing is necessary in order to generate attractive absolute returns over the long run. The approach combines the early identification of "Undiscounted Change," fundamental analysis in the context of the local socio-political environment and an avoidance of  "excesses" i.e. an emphasis on valuations whilst avoiding strong liquidity-driven market momentum where fundamentals take a back seat to greed.

The process includes industry, macroeconomic and socio-political analysis together with regular contact with key brokers and a program of meeting management. This helps them form an investment outlook and they will compare their expectations for the region with current market expectations. They will invest when they believe the markets have not discounted certain factors that they have identified. At stock level, there is a strong emphasis on property research.

Company analysis is done within the context of the local socio-political background with the managers focusing on the profit and loss, return on equity, a company’s competitive advantage, its margins and an array of valuation measures.

The number of holdings tends to be a function of the opportunity and market conditions. The market cap split is also driven by the manager's outlook on markets. From a portfolio construction point of view, their internal guidelines state that they can go up to 50 per cent invested in the larger markets, and up to 20 per cent in smaller markets. Cash can go up to 30 per cent temporarily.

Senior investment research analyst from OBSR, Amaya Assan, commented: "We rated the Marlborough Far East Growth fund in June and like that the lead manager Jeffrey Lum and the co-manager Chris Wong are both experienced market practitioners. They have a solid approach where they consider top-down and bottom-up influences and they are very conscious of valuations. They try to identify changes earlier than the markets and this has proven to work over time."

The views in this article are those of OBSR.