Press Releases

24 October 2006
EEA Fund Management celebrates its third birthday and three years of stellar performance.

Young does not always mean inexperienced as EEA go from strength to strength:

EEA Fund Management are delighted to announce that after three years of trading, their two flagship OEICs, the CF Epic UK Equity fund and the CF Epic Insurance and General fund have consistently outperformed in their respective sectors since launch.

Both funds are jointly managed by Simon Shaw and Jonathan Fieldsend who are AAA rated and AA rated by Citywire, respectively. Since launch to the end of September 2006,the CF Epic UK Equity fund has returned 85.12% against the FTSE All Share (Capital Index) which returned 42.37% over the same period. The CF Epic Insurance and General fund has faired just as well, returning 72.61% against the FTSE Financial Index which returned 35.80%, over the same period.

Though EEA Fund Management is but 3 years old, the firm is backed by a wealth of experience particularly in its managing director Simon Shaw who has nearly 20 years experience in the financial arena and an enviable track record in fund management, details of which are at the bottom of this press release.

EEA, which recently completed an MBO from EPIC Specialist Investments Limited, was founded by Simon Shaw in 2003 and specialises in the management of high performance equity mandates. The company manages two top performing UK-based mutual funds and an offshore hedge fund, as well as a closed-ended investment fund listed on AIM which specialises in the carbon markets.

The £42.5m CF EPIC UK Equity Fund is invested in a portfolio of 50 to 60 stocks and is benchmarked to the FTSE All Share. The fund offers diversification of risk but gives the managers flexibility to back their judgements on high conviction stocks. The managers construct a portfolio from stocks that fall into the value, growth and momentum categories, with the split between the three being dependent on available opportunities. The CF EPIC proposition is that by not being rigid in selection of investments the portfolio can persistently outperform.

The £68m CF EPIC Insurance and General Fund, as the name suggests, invests in companies whose activities are predominantly or partly deemed to be within the financial services industry. It invests primarily in the equities of such UK companies but may widen its investment brief to include overseas investments. It has a bias towards holding small and medium sized quoted companies and adopts the same style of portfolio construction, namely value, growth and momentum, as the UK Equity fund.

Simon Shaw, Managing Director and Fund Manager at EEA, said:

“I am delighted that over the last 3 years we have delivered consistently good returns outperforming not just the respective benchmarks but also many other funds in our peer groups. We give ourselves freedom at EEA to invest wherever we feel is appropriate, not being tied to particular sectors or geographical areas and that allows us to produce a constant flow of diverse ideas that have served us very well. We have experienced a period of strong performance and we fully intend to build on this. We are committed to delivering high returns with a controlled level of risk not just in the near future but over the long term too.”