Wendy Spires
Group Deputy Editor
9 July 2012
Daily News Analysis
Wells Fargo Asset Management is targeting UK and European investors with six new investment sub-funds under the Wells Fargo (Lux) Worldwide Fund as part of its international growth strategy.
The new vehicles give investors access to investment strategies which have previously been unavailable or under-represented in the UK and Europe, Wells Fargo said in a statement.
The new funds, which bring the firm’s European range to 13, are:
· Emerging Markets Equity II Fund (managers: Jerry Zhang and Derrick Irwin);
· Emerging Markets Income and Growth Fund (Anthony Cragg and Alison Shimada);
· Global Opportunity Bond Fund (Tony Norris, Peter Wilson, Alex Perrin, Michael Lee and Christopher Wightman);
· Precious Metals Fund (Michael Bradshaw and Oleg Makhorine);
· US Premier Growth Fund (Thomas Ognar, Bruce Olson and Joseph Eberhardy); and
· US Short-Term High Yield Bond Fund (Thomas Price, Kevin Maas and Michael Schueller).
Wells Fargo estimates that the European asset management sector has a market size of $2.9 trillion and a growth rate markedly faster than that of North America. As such, the new funds are a “logical next step for our growing international fund line-up,” said Andrew Owen, executive vice president at Wells Fargo Asset Management.
The firm first launched its European fund range in 2008 and says that over the past 18 months it has seen “meaningful” growth in both assets and clients investing in the existing funds.
The firm can in fact boast of very impressive growth in inflows in the last couple of years: inflows totaled $12 million in 2010 and $393 in 2011, but then the firm gathered $500 million in new assets in the first quarter of 2012 alone.
