When Sanjeev Shah took over the Fidelity Special Situations Fund in 2008, he had big shoes to fill. Star fund manager Anthony Bolton had managed the fund for 28 years prior to Shah’s arrival. But Shah, who has worked for Fidelity for 16 years, “has done a great job in maintaining the fund’s excellent investment record”, says Jeff Prestridge in The Mail on Sunday.
Since taking over, Shah has delivered a return of about 11% for investors in a tough market. That’s better than the FTSE All-Share, which returned 6% over the same period and even the average UK investment fund, which grew by just 4%.
In November, Hargreaves Lansdown’s Mark Dampier added the fund to his Wealth 150 – a list of what he believes are the best funds. “Shah has proven his mettle”, says Dampier, and “continued the fund’s excellent track record”. Research analyst Lipper has also been impressed. They’ve given the fund five stars (their top award) for Shah’s ability to deliver total returns consistently without taking too many risks.
Like Bolton before him, Shah focuses on hunting down unloved, unfashionable stocks whose growth prospects are, in his opinion, under-appreciated by the market. “I am finding selective opportunities in high-quality franchisees, such as GlaxoSmithKline,” he tells The Guardian. “A key theme within my fund remains a strong overweight in media stocks, including BSkyB.” He also believes that the low-economic-growth environment makes technology stocks a good bet. They will be “a major beneficiary of a likely increase in corporate capital expenditure”.
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Fidelity Special Situations Fund top ten holdings
| Name of holding | % of assets |
|---|---|
| HSBC Holdings | 7.1 |
| Vodafone | 6.3 |
| GlaxoSmithKline | 6.2 |
| Lloyds Banking | 5.4 |
| British Sky Broadcasting | 4.7 |
| AstraZeneca Plc | 3.6 |
| London Stock Exchange | 3.6 |
| BP | 3.3 |
| Logica | 2.8 |
| British Land | 2.7 |