The Dreyfus Corporation (Dreyfus), a BNY Mellon company, has announced that it has launched the Dreyfus Global Emerging Markets Fund, an actively managed, equity mutual fund. The fund is designed to seek capital appreciation by investing in emerging market countries including those located in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. Dreyfus has engaged its affiliate, Newton Capital Management, Ltd., to serve as the fund’s sub-adviser. Dreyfus is the fund’s investment advisor.
«The current volatility in emerging markets worldwide has created noteworthy opportunities for those investment managers who have a history of emerging markets expertise,» said Dreyfus President Charles Cardona. «Newton has more than 20 years of experience investing in emerging markets and emerging market equities. Using Newton’s distinctive global thematic approach to investing, we are confident Newton will continue to locate emerging markets opportunities.»
Newton employs a fundamental bottom-up investment process that emphasizes quality, including stock fundamentals and balance sheet strength, return on capital employed through the market cycle, and governance prioritizing shareholder interests. The process of identifying investment ideas begins by using a dynamic framework of identifying a core list of investment themes. Newton has currently organized its themes into four main areas of change: debt, crisis and policy; innovation; energy, environment and infrastructure; and geopolitics and demographics. Newton’s themes are based primarily on observable global economic, industrial, or social trends that Newton believes will positively affect certain sectors or industries and cause stocks within these sectors or industries to outperform others.
«As emerging markets equities are currently experiencing increased volatility, we believe there are increased investment opportunities available there for the long-term,» said Helena Morrissey CBE, Chief Executive Officer of Newton. «Newton has a long history investing in emerging markets and is delighted to be subadvising the Dreyfus Global Emerging Markets Fund, building on its strong investment record running this strategy in the UK. The fund seeks to capture the growth available in emerging markets through a high-conviction actively-managed portfolio, which uses Newton’s investment themes to guide its long-term approach, together with strong fundamental stock-picking skills to not only find the best companies in which to invest, but also to identify those sectors and industries that are best avoided.»
Robert Marshall-Lee and Sophia Whitbread, CFA, are the fund’s primary portfolio managers. Mr. Marshall-Lee, the lead portfolio manager, is the investment leader of the emerging markets equities team at Newton, where he has been employed since 1999. Ms. Whitbread is an investment manager on the emerging markets equities team at Newton, where she was employed from 2005 to 2010 and rejoined in January 2011.
Newton’s dedicated Emerging Markets Core Team utilizes the global research team of 29 in identifying the best emerging markets ideas globally. To pursue its goal, the fund normally invests at least 80% of its net assets in common stocks and other equity securities or derivatives in emerging market countries represented in the Morgan Stanley Capital International Emerging Markets Index (MSCI® EM Index), the fund’s benchmark index.