Bestinvest says
Skandia's Best Ideas funds brought a rare burst of innovation to the asset management industry, but in performance terms results so far have been mixed. The underlying fund managers all have track records in the industry and are generally well regarded, and the omission of their lower conviction ideas should result in better performance over the long term. However, since the managers operate independently the fund loses some of the risk controls typically included in portfolio construction. Charges are relatively high.
50% of the portfolio is invested in UK equities and 50% in international equities. Portfolio management is outsourced to a number of fund managers from different investment houses, each of whom independently select their 10 highest conviction stocks (“best ideas”). The fund is therefore invested in a mixture of investment styles, although most of the underlying managers can be described as stockpickers. They are generally experienced and well respected within the investment industry, though Skandia may still change the managers and firms used - typically if they underperform.
The UK weight remains fixed over time, but the international portion is reweighted annually in accordance with each region’s share of the global economy - Skandia argue that this means money will be shifted towards countries that are growing more quickly. As at March 2012 the target geographic allocation was 50% UK, 14.2% US, 12.5% Europe ex UK, 10.4% Emerging markets, 7.8% Asia Pacific excluding Japan, 5.1% Japan.