Artemis to launch new European fund

Managed by Mark Page and Laurent Millet, the Artemis European Opportunities Fund intends to exploit the managers’ proven stock-picking expertise in this sector.

From a concentrated portfolio – around 60 stocks - of best ideas, the fund’s aim is to provide investors with long term capital growth by investing in European equities, excluding the UK.

Its benchmark will be the FTSE European ex UK (TR) Index. Stock selection will be the key driver of performance, with both sectoral and geographic exposure playing a secondary role.

Commenting, Mark Page said:

“The case against European equities is well rehearsed. Yet the case for investing is also clear. With some of the most consistent creators of shareholder value trading at ‘value’ type multiples, there is a great deal of bad news already in the price. The average European company is trading at a significant discount to historic and relative values.

“European equities have underperformed cash and government bonds for the last 10 years and now offer very good value. Investors are worried (rightly) about the top-down issues and want safety at any cost. But in the process, they overlook the bottom-up opportunities.

“The last fund we ran gave investors consistent outperformance against the benchmark from 2004 to the end of 2010. We believe that our investment process can deliver that again.

"Stock selection and risk management are the keys. We see huge opportunities to differentiate between good and bad companies in Europe; and we hope to exploit these to the full for our investors.”

Mark Tyndall, Artemis’ senior partner, added:

“We launch funds at Artemis when we have the right people in place – as we do now. Mark and Laurent have an enviable record of consistent outperformance, having outperformed the benchmark in each of the last seven calendar years – and very few fund managers have achieved that.

"We believe that even in these volatile and difficult times, the fund will reward patient long term investors. This new fund makes a welcome addition to our focused range. We are looking forward to its success over the years to come.”