Karen Robertson celebrates ‘21st birthday’

Leading fund manager, Standard Life Investments will this week celebrate the 21st birthday of two of its most popular UK Equity mutual funds – the £225m UK Equity Growth Fund and the £585.5m UK Equity High Income Fund.

Both of the funds are managed by Karen Robertson, who is AA rated by Citywire, and have produced consistently strong performance since launch. They both also boast AA Standard & Poors’ ratings.

The UK Equity High Income Fund, which has more than doubled in size during the last year alone, has been top decile over 6 months, 2 and 3 years and top quartile over 1 and 5 years. By pursuing its aim of producing top quartile performance relative to the micropal income fund sector, the fund has over the past five years produced a total return of 86.58% compared to the average fund of 61.96%. The fund has also consistently, over the same period, produced a yield that is at least 10% above that of the market. Indeed, since the turn of the century, it has continuously increased the rate of income distribution – by an average of 10.63% per annum.

The UK Equity Growth Fund has been top quartile over 2, 3, 7, 15 and 20 years and has returned 45.84% more to investors than the sector average since launch. An investor who invested £1,000 into the fund at launch would now be sitting on an investment worth £9,951.97.

Jacqueline Kerr, Head of Mutual Fund Investments at Standard Life Investments, said: “Both of these funds benefit from the excellent stock-picking skills of Karen Robertson and the award-winning UK Equities team she works so closely with. A team approach is key to our success at Standard Life Investments and it has recently helped us lay claim to two ‘Best Overall Group

Awards’ at the Lipper Fund Awards 2007 in the ‘Equity Large’ and ‘UK Equity Large’ categories and our win at the Financial News 2006 Awards of the ‘UK Equity Manager of the Year’ title.

“By adhering strictly to our robust investment process and by using a range of indicators including technical analysis, earnings momentum and traditional valuation and analysis, our UK team is able to identify, and more often than not benefit from, situations which are not fully recognised by the market. I have every confidence that the team will continue to maintain the impressive and consistent returns these funds have produced to date.”