The London-headquartered investment manager has implemented limited issue status on the fund after it surpassed the £1.5 billion mark.

Barings has soft closed its Europe Select Trust fund after assets in the portfolio tripled over the past five years to more than £1.5 billion ($2.1 billion).

The £1.54 billion small-cap fund, managed by Nicholas Williams and the firm's European equity team, adopted limited issue status on 23 March 2016. From that date, Barings will no longer accept subscriptions from new customers or add the funds to new platforms. 

The fund returned 9.1 per cent over the last year, compared to an IA European Smaller Companies sector average of 6.5 per cent, according to Trustnet data.

“We review investment capacity regularly, and have recently repeated this exercise for our European smaller company range. Our conclusion is that the investment process followed in the funds can support a higher level of assets but that it would be prudent to manage further inflows as assets rise,” said Rod Aldridge, Barings' head of wholesale distribution for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

“We will, however, continue to accept additional investments from existing customers and platform partners. By acting now to protect the interests of our existing investors, we retain room to grow the current book of business organically from existing relationships.”