RWC Partners’ Graham Clapp to launch two European Growth Funds
Clapp’s European Equity team will launch two new long-only European Growth equity UCITS funds in Q4 2017. Clapp was previously at Fidelity UK for 22 years where he managed the €25bn Fidelity European Growth Fund before launching his own business, Pensato Capital, in 2008. At Fidelity and Pensato, Clapp’s long only funds produced annualised outperformance of 4.3% and 6.3% respectively1.
The RWC European Growth Fund will be managed following the strategy employed by the team’s existing Cayman-domiciled fund, although the similar RWC Continental Europe Growth Fund will have a limit on exposure to UK-listed companies. The new funds will form part of RWC’s UCITS range which currently accounts for c. $3.5bn of the organisation’s $12bn AUM.
Graham’s investment team of seven portfolio managers and analysts joined RWC in September 2017 from Pensato Capital. The senior team members have worked together for over 10 years and employ a core investment process which has delivered consistent outperformance since Clapp began managing assets at Fidelity in 1990.
RWC Partners’ CEO Dan Mannix commented:
“Graham was extremely keen to launch a long-only fund for European investors. During his time at Fidelity he had a huge following with the Fidelity European Growth Fund producing significant outperformance under Graham’s management and being the largest European equity fund at the time.
“We are seeing increasing interest in the European equity space and believe the asset class currently offers long-term strategic investors a real opportunity. European equities have for many years been priced at a discount to other main stock markets. Many believe that this discount has been justified by greater political and economic uncertainty surrounding continental Europe.
“However, investors today increasingly believe that the risks priced into European assets are much better understood and therefore see the appeal of the high quality European corporate sector. Various measures of valuation dispersion, especially outside of the largest listed stocks, also indicate that the environment for skilled stock selectors is providing good opportunities.
- Sources:
Fidelity performance data: Graham Clapp, 31/03/1999 – 31/12/2006.
Outperformance calculated versus a Fidelity benchmark, gross of fees.
Pensato performance data: Bloomberg, 30/01/2015 – 31/05/2017.
Outperformance calculated versus the MSCI Europe TR index, net of fees.