10 March 2020
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American Century Investments (ACI) and Nomura Asset Management (NAM) have announced the launch of the American Century Emerging Markets Sustainable Impact Equity fund, a sub-fund of Nomura Funds Ireland.
The new Dublin-based Ucits fund will actively invest in 70-75 companies that demonstrate accelerating growth, located primarily in emerging markets, while contributing to one or more of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). There are 17 goals, of which 15 are investible goals that sit alongside the firm's investment process.
In addition to seeking long-term growth, the fund will seek to make a positive social and environmental impact in emerging markets and provide excess return above the MSCI Emerging Markets Index. Investing in emerging markets involves the risk of loss.
The emerging markets where the firms currently measure this impact include South America, China, Thailand, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, India and South Africa.
The strategy will be managed by an experienced investment team led by American Century Investments' senior portfolio manager Patricia Ribeiro and portfolio manager Sherwin Soo.
Ribeiro and Soo have worked together for more than eight years and are supported by a well-resourced team of five analysts. The investment team meets with more than 2,000 companies annually and manages $4bn as of 31 December 2019 in emerging markets assets. The new Ucits fund will follow the same investment philosophy and process that the emerging markets equity team utilizes in managing the American Century Emerging Markets strategy with the differentiator that it will have the ESG/SDG overlay.
It will be added as a sub-fund to the Nomura Funds Ireland plc platform, which currently has $8.5bn as of 31 December 2019 in assets under management.
