Morgan Stanley IM Launches Fund For Asia Investors

Tom Burroughes

16 September 2016

Morgan Stanley Investment Management has launched a portfolio for professional investors in the Asia region.

The US firm has rolled out the Morgan Stanley Investment Funds (MS INVF) Global Brands Equity Income Fund (GBEI). It is an enhanced income version of the established Global Brands Fund in the Luxembourg SICAV domiciled fund format.

GBEI seeks to generate income and targets a yield of 4 per cent a year from a mix of dividends from high quality stocks and premiums from index option overwriting.

As of 30 June, the MS INVF Global Brands Fund I shares delivered 10.3 per cent net annualised total returns versus the MSCI World Net Index, which delivered 3.8 per cent since the fund’s inception on 30 October 2000.

The team that manages GBEI is supported by the solutions and multi-asset team, specialists in the implementation of option strategies. London-based portfolio managers William Lock, Bruno Paulson and Dirk Hoffmann-Becking are the main portfolio managers for GBEI. The international equity team managed assets of $34 billion across its four strategies as of 30 June 2016.

“We believe the GBEI portfolio’s high quality bias offers a far more robust approach to income generation than that typically offered by high dividend or income funds. We focus on the underlying company fundamentals and free cash flows, which means dividends are more likely to be sustainable and growing. The companies in GBEI make a high return on capital and are capital light. This means they can afford to pay out, and keep paying out, dividends to shareholders,” Lock said in a statement.