Skandia European Best Ideas Fund brings in BlackRock

Skandia Investment Group's Skandia European Best Ideas Fund managed by Citywire "A" rated manager Lee Freeman-Shor has awarded a €34m mandate to Richard Plackett of BlackRock.

The move to bring in Placket coincides with the 4th anniversary of the €340m fund.

Lee Freeman Shor, Lead Portfolio Manager of the Skandia European Best Ideas Fund said: "Richard already manages three other ten stock UK equity mandates for me. Over the last five and a half years he has delivered a return of 133%, massively outperforming the FTSE UK All Share Index which delivered a 33% return and the average UK manager that has returned 31%." * 

Since the launch of the multi manager fund in 2008, Skandia European Best Ideas is a top quartile performing fund beating 90% of all other European funds in its peer group of 1,104 funds - and year to date the fund is in the top five per cent of funds.*

As well as achieving first quartile, the Skandia European Best Ideas Fund has won the following awards:

"Silver" rating from Standard & Poor's
"B" rating from Feri EuroRating Services 
4 star Morningstar rating

James Millard, Chief Investment Officer at Skandia Investment Group said: "The fact the fund has delivered such outstanding results for clients during a period in history that has been exceptionally difficult for active managers, is very pleasing. It has been a true test of the "best ideas" philosophy and style of fund management and we have shown how powerful this approach to managing money can be. It is even more satisfying that while the average fund lost 6.4% over that period of time the Skandia European Best Ideas Fund was up 5.6% and made money for investors."

*source : Factset as at 10th April 2012