Bestinvest says
The fund invests in smaller companies in emerging markets which leads to bias to domestically orientated companies in the region. Aberdeen's global emerging markets team has a high level of interaction with their Aberdeen Asian colleagues based in Singapore. They place the same emphasis on investing in quality companies and undertake detailed proprietary company research. Bestinvest have met almost all of the team members which gives us confidence in their strength and depth. Investors should note that there will be an overlap in holdings with Aberdeen’s Asian Smaller Companies fund so it may be inadvisable to hold both for diversification purposes. The open-ended Aberdeen Global Emerging Markets Smaller Companies fund is similar to the London-listed closed-ended Aberdeen Emerging Markets Smaller Companies Trust (LSE:AEMS) run by the same manager.
The investment universe for this fund is defined by the MSCI Emerging Market Small Cap index. The team have now met a large number of companies within the global emerging markets universe and they are also able to draw on the in-depth company research that Aberdeen has carried out on small companies in Asia for a number of years. After an initial screen for quality criteria, the whole team follow the same approach to analysing companies. This focus on the quality of a business means that team discussion usually focuses on valuation of a business if it is considered good enough to invest in. The team set buy-price targets and maintain a watch list of stocks which includes businesses that meet their quality criteria but are considered too expensive to invest in. Stock selection and portfolio construction are described as sensitive to macro concerns.