Smaller company celebrations at Standard Life Investments

Leading fund manager, Standard Life Investments, has announced that both its UK Opportunities and its UK Smaller Companies funds have been awarded AA and AAA ratings respectively by ratings agency, Standard & Poor's. 21 out of the company's 30 eligible and actively managed funds have now achieved an A or above rating.

Caspar Trenchard, manager of Standard Life Investments' £292m UK Opportunities Fund has just passed his second year anniversary of managing the fund which has produced top decile performance over one, three and six months and one, three and five years. Over a two year period to 1 September 2009, the fund ranked 12th out of 298 funds in the IMA UK All Companies sector and since its launch in November 2002, it has returned 159% to investors versus the sector average of 54%.

Standard Life Investments UK Smaller Companies Fund, managed by Head of the UK Smaller Companies team, Harry Nimmo, has produced top quartile performance over two, three and ten years and top decile performance over five and seven years. Investors who invested in this fund at launch will have received an 268% return versus the sector average of 111%.

Claire Marshall, Investment Director - Mutual Funds at Standard Life Investments, said: "This announcement gives great credit to our smaller companies team who work superbly together and deserve to be recognised for the sheer strength of their investment expertise. Harry Nimmo has received a long line of awards this year for both the OEIC and the Investment Trust he manages, in addition to being given pole position in Citywire's Top 100 Fund Manager of the Year 2009.

"Caspar's record to date of helping investors achieve capital growth over the longer term is also impressive. In the year to date, Caspar has noted particular areas of outperformance such as his investments in Barclays and property group Quintain whose shares have risen from about 10p to £1.70 over the last five months and quality growth names such as Serco which have helped produce steady returns.

"We believe that the market recovery is now well established and I have every confidence that investors in both our UK Smaller Companies and UK Opportunities funds will continue to benefit from the proven and robust investment process our fund managers adhere to."