OREANDA-NEWS.Fitch Ratings has affirmed Henderson Horizon Global Technology Fund's 'Strong' Fund Quality Rating. The fund is managed by Henderson Global Investors.

The 'Strong' rating reflects the fund's clear investment process, which focuses on company fundamentals, industry analysis and company market positioning. The investment process is conducted by a highly experienced technology-specialist lead portfolio manager (PM).

KEY RATING DRIVERS
Fund Profile
The fund was launched in October 1996, and the current lead PM and investment process have been in place since 2001. The Henderson HF Global Technology Fund is a sub-fund of the Luxembourg SICAV 'Henderson Horizon Fund', with USD3.2bn of assets, as of end-December 2014.

Investment Process
The fund is a technology sector fund, and has a long term, mega cap, secular growth bias. The focus is on identifying companies with market-leading technology, strong fundamentals and superior market positioning. Fundamental company and industry assessment is combined with an analysis of themes within technology markets. Stock selection and portfolio construction is carried out by the PMs, who have autonomy to run the portfolio, but are subject to strict oversight from an independent risk function. The fund's benchmark, the MSCI AC World IT index, is used as an anchor for the portfolio, although the PMs are not constrained by it.

Resources
The fund is co-managed by Stuart O'Gorman and Alison Porter. Stuart O'Gorman is the lead PM with 18 years investment experience, 16 years of those within technology equities. Alison Porter joined Henderson in 2014 and has 19 years investment experience. The Global Technology team was formally delineated from the Global Growth equities team in 2014, which Ian Warmerdam, the previous co-PM, formally heads. Both teams interact closely in the Henderson Edinburgh office. An additional hire to the technology team was made in 2014, Richard Clode, who specialises in Asian technology.

Track Record
The fund has outperformed the Lipper category "Equity Sector Information Tech" over 10 years, although has slightly underperformed on a three-year basis. The fund has achieved the highest Lipper Leader consistent return score over ten years, indicating robust performance during a variety of market conditions. The fund is likely to underperform markets driven by small- and mid-cap rallies given the fund's large cap bias, and by value rallies given the secular growth bias.

Fund Manager
Henderson is a listed, global asset manager with GBP76.6bn assets under management as of end-September 2014. Henderson has a long track record of managing specialist technology assets since 1983, and the technology team currently manages a total of around USD4.4bn.

RATING SENSITIVITIES
Fund quality ratings may be sensitive to material changes in the investment or operational processes or market risk profiles of the fund. A material adverse deviation from Fitch's guidelines for any key rating driver could cause Fitch to downgrade the rating. For example, notable structural deterioration in the fund's performance or departure of the lead PM may cause the fund's rating to be place 'Under Review' or downgraded.

Fitch's Fund Quality Ratings combine Fitch's experience in qualitative fund analysis with rankings and performance data from Lipper, a Thomson Reuters company. Fitch's Fund Quality Ratings offer an independent, forward-looking assessment of a fund's key performance and risk attributes and consistency of longer-term returns, relative to peer group or benchmarks. The ratings focus on the fund manager's investment process, key fund performance drivers, risk management, and the quality of the fund's operational infrastructure.