This fund has recently come onto our radar; this meeting with one of the managers was a chance to understand more about the team and the process behind the fund. Rory Stokes is the lead manager and he is supported by Ollie Beckett.
Rory started by giving some background to the team at Henderson and the wider European team, which has a strong focus on small and mid-cap companies. This strong unit means that they can rely on each member of the team rather than external analysts.
The key to the fund is about screening companies and looking for valuation anomalies, then going out and meeting them. We talked about whether CEOs will spin a story and Rory agreed this can be the case. The way they approach any meeting is to be highly prepared, they don’t go into the meeting having already decided to buy into it, this is the ground work. The meeting is about listening to what the management say and how that ties back to the numbers….read more