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Norway's SKAGEN Launches High-Conviction Equities Fund

Tom Burroughes

27 May 2015

, the Norwegian fund manager, has launched a new fund, SKAGEN Focus, which is a concentrated, long-only global equity fund available in a UCITS structure and available in the UK. It is managed by Filip Weintraub and Jonas Edholm.

The fund has a value bias, a statement from SKAGEN Funds said, and stocks are chosen on a bottom-up basis, focusing on specific characteristics and potential triggers for future value.

Holding around 35 stocks, the fund will have the most concentrated of SKAGEN’s equity fund range. The top 10 positions are expected to form 40 to 50 per cent of the portfolio. The fund is benchmarked against the MSCI World AC TR Index.

Weintraub was previously lead portfolio manager of another SKAGEN fund, SKAGEN Global, from 2001 to 2010. He has more than 25 years’ experience and started his career as an analyst at Albina Fuel and held senior roles at Crabbe Huson Group and LF Capital before joining SKAGEN in 2001. He re-joins SKAGEN from the Labrusca Family Office, which he established in 2010 and where he managed a long/short equity fund.

Edholm also joins from the Labrusca Family Office and has more than 20 years’ investment experience. He has had roles in risk management, asset allocation and as an active value-biased stock-picker, both on the long and the short side.