The Syz & Co Group has launched a more balanced strategy for investing into emerging markets based on a better-distributed emerging markets index, developed in-house by the Syz Fund Research unit.

This new index - Syz Emerging Markets Index - is equally weighted between the 21 countries that make up the MSCI EM index, with an adjustment for market liquidity. 

This is in contrast to most of the emerging markets funds, which concentrate on stock markets with the largest capitalisations and leads to a concentration of geopolitical risk and an over-representation of certain countries.

Management of the fund has been entrusted to Acadian Asset Management, a fund management company established in 1986 in Boston (US). Acadian, which has been active in emerging countries since 1994, manages about EUR10.74bn in emerging markets and boasts an 18-year track-record of generating alpha; 80 per cent of this outperformance is due to stock picking based on a highly disciplined fundamental approach.

The Oyster Emerging Opportunities is a Ucits compliant, Luxembourg Sicav offering daily liquidity.

“Our role is not confined to selecting the best managers, but also involves proposing innovative strategies,” says Katia Coudray Cornu (pictured), head of Syz Fund Research. "With this fund, we wanted to revisit the way in which the country allocation of an emerging market fund is carried out.”
 
“At a time when stock markets’ good performance is encouraging investors to increase risk in their portfolios, we at Oyster wanted to offer a different solution that enables them to invest in the ‘emerging countries’ theme as a whole, and to avoid the risk of concentration in a handful of countries," adds Xavier Guillon, chief executive of Oyster Funds.