Nedgroup appoints Ninety One to its Rainmaker fund

Nedgroup Investments has replaced the manager of its once-popular Rainmaker Fund following a prolonged period of underperformance.

The fund, with around R6.5 billion of assets under management, has the "distinction" of underperforming the benchmark (the average across unit trusts in the Asisa Equity: General category) over the last one, three, five, seven and 10 years.

Tellingly, that benchmark has underperformed the FTSE/JSE Capped Shareholder Weighted All Share Index and All Share Combined (prior to the Swix) index for around a decade.

Abax Investments (formerly Polaris Capital) was founded in 2003 as a boutique asset manager and has managed the Rainmaker Fund for Nedgroup Investments since then.

Prior to its formation, the investment team at Abax had managed the Rainmaker Fund since its inception in 2000.

Abax also manages the Flexible Income Fund, Opportunity Fund and Entrepreneur Fund for the bank's investment arm.

Monitoring the manager 'closely'