Muna Abu-Habsa: Today, I'm going to give you the inside scoop on the pan-European Fund Manager of the Year awards. The awards are based purely on the qualitative insights of our analysts across Europe.
So, over the last few months, the analysts pulled together to identify quality managers who they believed are amongst the best at what they do. So, although nominees should have produced strong performance for investors in 2016, they needed to also show an ability to serve investors well over the long term. The awards are designed to help investors cut through the clutter and quickly access the best forward-looking insights of our manager research team.
Now, to ensure consistency in our assessments and hold nominees to the highest standards, any Morningstar medalists were eligible for a nomination, so managers running funds with Morningstar Analyst Ratings of Bronze, Silver or Gold. Those funds have been put through a rigorous evaluation using our 5-pillar methodology where in addition to performance we weigh the quality of management, the strength and repeatability of the process that's being used to run the fund, the quality of the parent organisation and how it treats its investors as well as costs. So, it's not at all easy to qualify for a nomination and winning is an even higher hurdle.
I want to therefore say a huge congratulations to the winners this year, Martin Skanberg on winning the European Equity award; Jeremy Podger on the Global Equity award; and Sander Business and Roeland Moraal on the Fixed-Income award. They were against strong contenders, so very well done.