Cologne The corona crash in late winter 2020 was sudden and short, but the following race to catch up on the international stock exchanges got exciting: Again and again, setbacks in the fight against the virus or emerging fears of inflation caused setbacks.
During this phase, active fund managers were able to outperform the markets and ETF index funds with targeted portfolio adjustments. An analysis by the Handelsblatt Research Institute (HRI) provides information on who succeeded in doing this.
In a multi-stage process, for the second time since 2020, the HRI experts have identified the most renowned fund managers in Germany in the categories “German stocks”, “European stocks” and “Sustainability stocks”.
The basic requirement for everyone was that they had to have been in the top 50 for the past twelve months (as of the end of August) in the performance rating of the Scope rating agency in their segment. In addition, the HRI asked around 1,400 German fund managers which colleague was particularly positive in the respective segment.
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Assessments by rating agencies also counted: Citywire, Scope or Morningstar had to positively mention the funds or their managers. “The final lists are made up of the weighting of the responses to the survey, the performance and the database research,” explains Simon Brauer, Senior Researcher at HRI.
Only German fund managers and funds that can be traded in Germany by private investors were honored. 32 fund managers who manage 26 funds achieved a top rating this year. As in 2020, the German fund experts with 16 funds and 21 managers were particularly strong in “Aktien Deutschland” – for two reasons: The competition here is somewhat less strong than, for example, with European stocks. Above all, however, the German managers use the short distances to the companies and maintain close contact.
“The intensive research and direct contact with management pay off especially for small and medium-sized companies,” says Björn Glück, portfolio manager of the Frankfurt fund boutique Lupus alpha. He has been managing the “Lupus alpha Smaller German Champions” since 2013 and defended his award from 2020.
Christoph Gebert and Hendrik Leber also rely primarily on values from the SDax and MDax for the “Acatis Champions Select”. Andreas Strobl from Berenberg Bank was the only one to receive two awards: for the small-cap fund “Berenberg Aktien Mittelstand” and the “Berenberg Aktien -strategy Germany”, which primarily invests in blue chips from the DAX such as Linde or SAP. “It shows that with targeted stock selection it is possible in the large-cap segment to outperform the benchmark”, Strobl is convinced.
Matthias Born, Head of Investment at Berenberg, also defended his award from the previous year. With his “European Focus Fund” he was one of six award-winning fund managers with a focus on Europe. Born focuses on growth companies primarily in the technology, health and consumer sectors; the common heavyweights are represented below average. Most of the other award winners also achieved their above-average performance primarily with European technology stocks, which in some cases significantly outperformed the broad market.
While the number of German and European funds has remained almost constant recently, the sustainable funds sector grew strongly. “Numerous national and international fund companies have launched new products with a focus on sustainability,” says HRI expert Brauer.
Five German fund managers were able to stand out particularly positively in the broad international competition. In addition to the “DWS Invest ESG Climate Tech” with the expert Tim Bachmann and the “CS Environmental Impact” by Holger Frey, this also includes the “Squad Green – Balance” by Stephan Hornung and Johannes Köpple.
While these two are very flexible with a fund volume of around 50 million euros, Henning Padberg has bigger problems with his co-fund manager Thomas Sorensen. You have to profitably place around ten billion euros in investment funds in various fund tranches. Nevertheless, they have recently succeeded in doing what has secured Padberg his place among the top fund managers.
More: Up to 32 percent return: global equity funds in a major sustainability check