The Aegon global opportunities fund is a Dublin registered UCITS III fund, which is available to investors in Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK and going forward across Europe.
The launch marked the integration of Aegon’s asset management businesses across the world and this fund brought together the investment management expertise of the teams in the Netherlands and the UK.
The fund will be managed by Olaf Van den Heuvel. He will be supported by a team of five in the Netherlands and the wider Aegon Asset Management Multi Asset Group in the UK and the Netherlands which consists of 10 investment professionals.
Mr Heuvel said: “It is our investment philosophy that excessive optimism and pessimism regularly cause over and under valuation of the financial markets. We believe active exploitation of these price anomalies with a process orientated approach in a risk controlled manner will create increased portfolio returns. As such, we add value through our top down analysis, which we use to exploit mis-pricings between asset classes and intra asset class aggregates as well as long only positions.”
Martin Harris, head of European distribution at Aegon Asset Management, said: “This is a very exciting development for Aegon Asset Management, which we plan to roll out across Europe, starting with our core markets of the Netherlands and the UK.
“This is an excellent example of how the combined strength of Aegon Asset Management as a global business can really add value to our customer proposition. Olaf has clearly demonstrated through the portfolios he has run for Aegon’s insured business over the last three years that his global opportunities strategies add real value.”
As part of Aegon, Aegon Asset Management has businesses in over 20 countries in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Aegon Asset Management manages approximately EUR200bn on behalf of individual investors, financial institutions, pension funds and insurance companies around the world.
A UCITS compliant (and registered in its home state) fund can be freely marketed (passported) to the public in all 30 countries of the European Economic Area (EEA).
