The winners for the S&P Singapore Fund Awards and the Edge-Lipper Singapore Fund Awards have been announced. This year, Fidelity Investments emerged as a big winner at both events, bagging a total of 24 accolades. At the S&P Fund Awards Fidelity bagged 10 awards, followed by DBS Asset Management which took home 5 awards. At the Lipper ceremony, Fidelity garnered 14 awards, whilst Schroder Investment Management came in a close second with 12 awards. Fidelity won in several categories including Europe equity, US Equity, Asia ex-Japan equity, and Europe balanced.

Fidelity Singapore's General Manager Andrew Jenkins says the fund house's broad sweep at both award ceremonies, shows that Fidelity has global expertise in managing funds. "When we first came into this market, investors had the impression that all our funds were US equity funds. They didn't realize that we have a very wide range of funds. One of the things that I found gratifying, is that we won awards in literally every single geographical region. And I think what people are beginning to realize is that we are not just a US or European fund house, but a truly global fund house."

He adds that Fidelity's success at the fund awards is a direct result of its investment philosophy, which served it well in the past few years. "We are very much a research oriented fund house. We are not great asset allocators; we don't have economists and strategists. We add value by trying to find good quality companies whose earnings are under estimated. Those sorts of companies over the long term do very well, but when markets trade technically (stocks trading on momentum rather than fundamentals), these companies don't do as well.

S&P Fund Awards

The S&P Investment Funds Awards Singapore is held to recognize the top-performing funds over the past year. It is considered an annual report card 'indicating which funds have demonstrated the strongest performance when compared to other funds with similar objectives over the time periods reviewed' says S&P.

According to S&P, the assessment methodology for this year's awards remains unchanged with the only sectors eligible to be evaluated for the awards being those that contain 5 or more funds possesing sufficient history. A calculation known as the Relative Risk-Adjusted Ratio is then used to measure the performance of the funds vis-à-vis their peers, producing 39 winners from a total of 19 sectors for this year's Award. A complete list of the award winning funds is shown below.

The Edge-Lipper Fund Awards

The Edge-Lipper Fund Awards are held annually, to recognize superior performance of funds across asset classes and sectors. The criteria for assesment are as follows:

• Funds registered for sale in Singapore as of 31st December 2004
• At least 36 months of performance history as of 31st December 2004 (for the 1-year awards, only 12 months of performance history as of 31st December 2004 is needed)
• Lipper global classifications with at least 5 distinct portfolios, excluding residual classifications and institutional funds
• Asset classes: equity, bond and mixed asset

A complete list of the award winning funds is shown below.

BUYER BEWARE!

Be forewarned that the awards do not indicate which sectors or regions you should be putting your money in going forward. As they were given based on historical performances, do bear this in mind: Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Investors should be clearly aware of their risk profile and diversify their investments accordingly. If you'd like to know more about the benefits of diversification (click here). You can also check out our Fundsupermart Recommended Portfolios (click here), and our research article on how to construct a core and supplementary portfolio (click here).