FUND FOCUS: Four Rensburg heads beat just one

By Stephen Womack, Mail on Sunday Personal Finance Correspondent
Updated: 16:00 EST, 27 June 2009

Which proverb rings true - the more the merrier or too many cooks spoil the broth?

Leeds-based investment manager Rensburg clearly favours the former.

Its UK Managers' Focus Trust has four managers, each pitching in ideas from their specialist area to create a portfolio of up to 50 firms.

Colin Morton picks his ten favourite blue-chip stocks while mid-size company expert Paul Spencer adds ten from the FTSE 250 index.

Small companies specialist Stuart Sharp chooses up to 20 from his sector to give the blend some spice. 

Finally, Mark Hall can pick any ten UK companies - and he feels now is the time to be more adventurous.

'Having been focused on firms that would make it through the crisis, we're looking at companies with strong operating profits but weak balance sheets that have the potential to rebuild, such as Enterprise Inns and builder Taylor Wimpey,' he says.

Surely four managers will have different views?

Hall says: 'There is a lot of discussion about what is going on. And there is competition between us. We all want to have the biggest share of the fund, which demonstrates our picks have done best.'

Performance has been mixed. The fund's exposure to smaller and midcap companies meant it fell by more than the average fund in the UK All-Companies sector last year. 

But it has picked up recently as investors have turned back to smaller firms.

Ben Willis, head of research at financial adviser Whitechurch Securities in Bristol, recommends the fund.

'We like the approach where they are not stuck to following a benchmark or sector,' he says.