Bestinvest says
In July 2010 the fund's previous manager, Gillian Lakin (CIO), left the fund and this followed the acquisition of Thornhill Investment Managers by Cazenove, who put in place Julie Dean, manager for the Cazenove UK Opportunities fund. Whilst so far she has provided positive relative returns, she is not a Bestinvest rated manager and as such this fund is not on our recommended list. Note given the fund's small size there is a chance that it could merge into one of Cazenove's existing funds, such as UK Opportunities.
The fund invests in larger capitalised UK companies and whilst it is well diversified across the market sectors, it is concentrated in nature. The manager pursues a pragmatic approach known as business cycle investing (top-down approach), setting sector and style exposures based on global economic views which are determined at Cazenove’s pan European Equity Strategy meeting. The portfolio is tilted towards stock types the manager believes will benefit in the next stage of the cycle – for instance, defensive stocks during a recession. The process also includes bottom-up analysis, i.e. analysing a company in its own right, in great depth, to understand the quality of the business and whether it is currently undervalued. The importance attached to top-down and bottom-up analysis varies according to the stage in the economic cycle – "inflection points" in the business cycle are catalysts for portfolio changes.