Bestinvest says
The idea of this fund is to gain exposure to European stock markets, but
without all the risks attached to actively managed European portfolios. In the past the fund has been relatively successful at tracking European markets, but we prefer HSBC European Index which has lower costs.
In order to achieve its objective of closely replicating the FTSE World Europe ex UK index the fund uses a representative sample of direct equities from that index. To do this an approach of statistical sampling techniques is used to construct and maintain a portfolio, the underlying value of which exhibits the performance characteristics of the Index. Therefore a large number of European market constituents will be held in the fund but typically in smaller sub sectors a basket approach will be taken, whereby only a collection of stocks will be held.