Sarasin offers low-cost option for access to emerging markets

Sarasin & Partners has launched a new fund which will invest across 19 emerging markets using systematic rebalancing, as a low-cost way of getting exposure to a broad cross-section of these growing markets. The fund’s strategy follows a similar fund which Sarasin has operated in Europe for 16 years. The Sarasin IE Emerging Markets – Systematic Fund is a Dublin-based unit trust and will be equally weighted across 19 emerging markets. Compared to the MSCI Emerging Markets index, the fund has a wider spread of countries, as the index is 64% weighted to just five countries: China, South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil and South Africa. Sarasin said that this means it will provide more exposure to smaller, more dynamic economies. It added that the fund will achieve this exposure through a process of unfunded swaps which will be executed with a number of major investment banks. It commented: “By eliminating stock picking, the fund will remove subjectivity and manager risk from the investment process, and avoid liquidity issues that can arise with some stocks especially those of smaller companies.”