JPMorgan emerging markets opportunities fund receives Zenith rating

Research house Zenith has rated JPMorgan’s Emerging Markets Opportunities Fund ‘Recommended’, stating that J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s emerging markets equity team “is one of the strongest within the emerging market sector.” J.P. Morgan Asset Management manages USD$6.3 billion in this strategy globally.

Zenith commented in its report that the research process for the Fund is “well structured, providing portfolio managers with a strong foundation.” Constructed by chief investment officer, Richard Titherington and portfolio manager, Amit Mehta, the report highlights that “the Fund is expected to represent a high conviction exposure to the best ideas identified by J.P. Morgan’s investment team”.

Zenith considers the Fund’s research process, which covers almost 700 emerging markets companies, “to be robust, providing the investment team with a strong framework through which to generate differentiated investment insights.”

“We are very pleased with Zenith’s assessment of our Emerging Markets Opportunities Fund in its first year of being rated,” said David Hallifax, head of Australia Funds, J.P. Morgan Asset Management. “Zenith has recognised that our unique investment process combining bottom-up company knowledge with a top-down macro perspective makes full use of the insight of our local resources across the emerging world and is designed to exploit the superior growth potential in emerging markets.”

Furthermore, Zenith considers “J.P. Morgan’s risk checklist to be an important component of the investment process as it ensures the analysts can effectively communicate the key risks inherent in each company.”

Mr Hallifax continued, “We wanted to present broader opportunities to Australian investors and through this Fund, which seeks to outperform the MSCI Emerging Markets Index (Total Return Net), investors have the potential to invest in sectors not well represented in Australia.”