Addressing Bank of Valletta at a seminar at the Ramla Bay Resort last month, Peter Perotti, general manager of Valletta Fund Management Limited, gave a review of the performance of the funds for the quarter ending June 30, in particular the success of the La Valette Multi-Manager Property Fund, which as at June 30 had a fund size in excess of €82 million.
During this seminar, Mr Perotti launched the VFM Multi-Manager campaign. The VFM Multi-Manager range consists of five funds: the La Valette Multi Manager Property Fund, the Vilhena Dynamic Multi-Manager Fund and the Vilhena European Multi-Manager Fund, which are denominated in euro, and the Vilhena UK Multi-Manager Fund and the Vilhena US Multi-Manager Fund which are denominated in sterling and US dollar respectively.
The upfront charge on these funds has been discounted with immediate effect to 2.5% until September 30 and, in the case of the La Valette Multi-Manager Fund, the upfront charge is discounted for applications received until October 4.
"The multi-manager range of funds has proved extremely popular with investors predominantly in view of the selection of funds spread across different fund managers," Mr Perotti said. "The VFM range of multi-manager funds, which as at June 30 had over €144 million worth of investments, are managed by Insight Investment Management (Global) Limited, the investment management arm and a fully owned subsidiary of Halifax Bank of Scotland plc and one of UK's largest asset managers".
The seminar continued with a video presentation by the Multi-Manager team at Insight Investment. Ana Cukic Munro, director, Portfolio Strategy and Construction, spoke on the proprietary software that was developed in house and is used to control risk and manage portfolios effectively, and Patrick Armstrong, director Fund and Manager Selection, outlined the rigorous fund and manager selection process used in managing multi-manager funds.
The sales seminar was also addressed by Mark Vella, head of Marketing at Valletta Fund Management Ltd, who spoke about the comprehensive range of euro denominated funds that VFM has to offer to Maltese investors as the country gears itself to adopt the single European currency in January 2008.
VFM's range of euro-denominated funds consists of eight investment solutions that invest in different asset classes to include money market, bonds, equity, property and absolute return funds and which have different risk profiles to cater for all types of investors.
The VFM euro denominated investment solutions are already extremely popular with investors with over €192 million invested across these funds as at June 30.
Later on, Aldo Scardino and David Pace Ross from Bank of Valletta's Stockbroking, Advisory and Portfolio Management Unit, gave a review as well as an outlook of the local market and spoke about the potential of investing in VFM's range of equity, bond and balanced Malta Funds.
These seminars are organised by VFM on a quarterly basis to keep Bank of Valletta's licensed sales personnel abreast of the development in the local and international markets as well as on the performance of the VFM's range of funds.