Graham Clapp took over from his famed predecessor Anthony Bolton at the beginning of that year. The basic pillars of the investment process remain unchanged. This is a pure bottom-up, stockpicking offering, with no constraints on country or sector exposure. While it compares its performance against the FTSE World Europe index, w
hich consists of about 480 companies, Mr Clapp and his London-based team of 53 analysts cover a universe of over 1,300 firms. Not least thanks to Fidelity’s considerable influence in the City Mr Clapp manages to conduct around 700 one-on-one company meetings each year.
In his first year as manager of the fund Mr Clapp saw strong inflows and added 139 new company positions, while maintaining 110 holdings that he inherited from Mr Bolton. This makes for a very diversified portfolio but the top 100 holdings account for about 70-75% of assets.
Mr Clapp is still overweight in medium-sized companies compared with his internal benchmark. During the course of 2003 he reduced the overweight position in defensive sectors such as healthcare and tobacco. He also increased his stake in the media and entertainment industries, a bet he is still making today.
In the summer of last year Mr Clapp significantly augmented his exposure to telecommunications firms, adding to positions in some mobile operators. He also maintains exposure to certain telecom operators in emerging Europe because of their earnings potential which is driven by the rapid rise in penetration rates in that region.
Macroeconomic views do not really play an important role in the management of this fund and Mr Clapp aims to always be fully invested. He still sees plenty of opportunities in the market, being encouraged by the favourable ratio of earnings upgrades versus downgrades and the abating strength of the euro.
While the portfolio structure has seen important changes since Mr Clapp’s takeover of the fund volatility remains relatively low. This is still one of the better funds for investors looking for a broadly diversified, yet actively managed European equity [share] fund. But the rise in assets and the fact that this was not accompanied by a lowering of fees has to be a concern.