Few fund managers escaped the financial crisis unscathed, but Philip Gibbs is one of them. The manager of Jupiter’s Financial Opportunities Fund has been at the helm since the fund’s launch in 1997 and has outperformed his sector in nine of the past ten years.
Gibbs was the only fund manager John Duffield couldn’t tempt from Jupiter when he left the firm he founded to set up the ill-fated New Star. Staying put and delivering strong results for his investors made this “quiet, cricket-loving fund manager a firm favourite among financial advisers”, says Emma Wall in The Sunday Telegraph.
The fund aims to realise long-term capital growth by investing in companies in the global financial sector, and it has achieved it with a return of 52% over the past five years. Over the same period, the FTSE Financials index has dropped 19.9%.
In June, Guy de Blonay returned to Jupiter to co-manage the fund. Between them, Blonay and Gibbs have dramatically reduced the fund’s US weighting. They have done so on fears over unemployment figures and a stalling economic recovery. The pair have chosen instead to increase their holdings in the Bank of China and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China in order to tap into the “structural growth and healthy public and private sector balance sheets of the Far East”.
The fund has an initial charge of 5.25% and an annual charge of 1.5%, but if you buy it through the fund supermarket Hargreaves Lansdown, those fees are reduced to 0.25% and 1.25% respectively.
Contact: 0844-620 7600.
Jupiter Financial Opportunities Fund top ten holdings
| Name of holding | % of assets |
|---|---|
| DnB NOR | 8.45 |
| Standard Chartered | 6.94 |
| Sun Hung Kai Properties | 6.30 |
| Bank of China | 4.45 |
| Citigroup | 3.98 |
| HSBC | 3.92 |
| Turkiye Garanti Bankasi | 3.73 |
| Industrial & Commercial Bank of China | 2.95 |
| China Construction Bank | 2.69 |
| Lloyds TSB | 2.23 |