Goldman Sachs launches frontier markets equity fund

Asset management arm of banking giant sets sights on untapped EM countries in new SICAV strategy.

by Chris Sloley on Sep 11, 2013 at 13:34

Goldman Sachs Asset Management has launched an equity fund focused on frontier and BRIC markets.

The Goldman Sachs Growth Markets Equity Portfolio fund was formally launched on September 10 and will be run with a team-managed approach.

It is understood that the company had intended to launch the fund at the start of 2014. The reason for the launch being brought forward to Q3 2013 was not revealed.

The timing of the launch comes just three months after Goldman Sachs soft-closed its Next-11 Equity fund, which had reached $1.7 billion in assets under management.

The new fund, which comes shortly after the company launched an emerging market debt fund, is aimed at investing in companies which either operate or are listed in the Next-11 or BRIC nations.

This includes: Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Turkey and Vietnam (Next-11 countries) as well as in Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC countries).

The fund is US-dollar denominated and will be benchmarked against the MSCI EM (Emerging Markets) TR USD index.

Goldman Sachs AM already runs one fund which includes frontier market investments. This is the Goldman Sachs Growth & Emerging Markets Equity fund, which was launched in June 2007.

However, this 50-70 stock, Luxembourg-domiciled fund is seen as a more generalist emerging markets fund.