Highest international rating for two SA funds

Two South African unit trusts, the Sanlam Global Financial Fund and Sanlam Global Best Ideas Fund have received five star rankings from Morningstar, a global investment research house which runs one of the world's most prestigious unit trust rating agencies.

Kokkie Kooyman, Head of Sanlam Investment Management (SIM) Global, who manages both funds says, "International investors hold these ratings in high regard and this is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the majority of US fund flows are directed to funds with five-star Morningstar ratings. It is often thought that an away from the index approach to stockpicking is high risk. The rating measures both performance and risk and thus challenges this view."

In addition to this recent ranking, Kooyman's funds have consistently been among the world's top-performing. "I believe much of the SIM Global teams success stems from our not setting out to beat the index, or to compete with other fund managers. We focus our efforts on finding the 50 companies in the world out of a universe of 54 000 that are the most undervalued. We have a clear matrix of the characteristics in our search for our target investments. We waste little time on trying to forecast interest rates, economic growth rates and currency moves. We have found that the combination of experience, the willingness to work hard and travel excessively to visit those companies our desk research has identified as being undervalued, is a good recipe for success.

"Receiving this ranking will definitely raise awareness amongst global investors.," concluded Kooyman.

SIM Global launched a rand-denominated feeder fund in August 2007.