Fidelity Global Special Situations

Fidelity Global Special Situations is run by Chistine Baalham and Tom Record and is made up predominantly of larger companies. Christine and Tom use the breadth of Fidelity's global research team to highlight what they see as being the best ideas from around the world. Holdings fall into one of three categories, forming a blended portfolio that can deliver consistently through all market conditions.

Our opinion

Christine has made a strong start to her fund management career and is a capable replacement of long-serving manager Jeremy Podger. The fund is benefited by a solid but flexible process with the ability to leverage on an extensive network of Fidelity's global analyst team.

Fund manager

Christine is lead manager on this fund. Previously she was a portfolio manager at Ninety One for the Global Equity Strategy. She began her career at Schroder Investment Management, where she was recruited as part of the Schroder Investment Management graduate training programme in 1996. She worked on the UK fund management desk before joining the research department as the UK insurance and tobacco analyst. Christine gained a Master of Philosophy degree in Chemistry from Cambridge University in 1996, after graduating with a first-class degree in Natural Sciences the previous year, and is a member of the CFA® institute.
Tom joins Christine as co-manager of this fund. He previously was lead manager of the International Equity fund and co-manager of the Global Equity and Global Focus funds at Liontrust. Tom joined Liontrust in April 2022 as part of the acquisition of Majedie Asset Management, where he had managed funds for eight years, and is a member of the Liontrust Global Fundamental team. Before joining Majedie in 2014, Tom had been an Investment Manager at Baillie Gifford. Tom holds Master of Arts and Master of Natural Sciences degrees, specialising in Biochemistry, from Pembroke College, Cambridge and is a CFA Charterholder.

Christine BaalhamFund manager

Investment process

While the managers are aware of macroeconomic events, their ideas are driven at the stock level by Fidelity's large team of global analysts. Investments fall into one of three buckets: corporate change - shorter-term investments which take advantage of corporate restructuring or initial public offerings (new stocks coming to the market); exceptional value – cheap stocks which have a potential to grow earnings; and unique businesses – companies with a dominant position within their industries, which should be able to grow for many years to come.

ESG

ESG - Integrated  

The team works closely with analysts and the ESG team to evaluate ESG factors throughout the process and are believers in sustainability, both as a matter of principle and as a key driver of investment returns. As such, the team strives to gain an in-depth understanding of the relevant ESG issues applicable to their investments through the bottom-up research process, company engagement, active ownership and industry collaboration. Overall, the portfolio management team believes integrating ESG requires a holistic approach and is not simply a function of investing in those companies with strong ESG characteristics while avoiding those with poor ESG scores. The direction of travel matters and, as shareholders, they believe they can influence positive change for improved investor outcomes.

Risk

The managers are conscious of the fund’s benchmark and will therefore have only modest differences between sectors or geographies. Fidelity Global Special Situations is very well diversified, with 100 to 150 holdings. This limits the impact of any one stock on the fund's performance. The three buckets approach will also mean that the fund will not be exposed to any one investment style.

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