Wellington Management’s John Boselli has been named FE fundinfo’s Alpha Manager of the Year for 2023.
His fund, Wellington Global Quality Growth, has been a standout performer in the IA Global sector, returning 241.1% over 10 years. This was more than 110 percentage points above the sector average and 85 percentage points above the MSCI ACWI benchmark.
He beat last year’s winner, Anthony Smouha from GAM, as well as Julian Fosh and Anthony Cross, both from Liontrust, Pascal Dudle at Vontobel and Robin Parbrook from Schroders.
Boselli enjoyed two wins on the night, taking home the award for best FE fundinfo Alpha Manager managing a global developed equities fund.
However, Wellington Global Quality Growth has not had the strongest run over the past few years: it is in the bottom quartile of its sector over one and three years and has failed to beat its peer group since 2020.
His growth style has fallen significantly out of favour recently, but the manager, who is retiring at the end of 2023, has navigated his fund to the top quartile of the sector in six of the past 10 calendar years. It has never fallen to the bottom quartile in a calendar year.
The fund has also beaten the MSCI World Growth index in six of the past 10 calendar years, including in 2022, when the fund made a 15.8% loss, compared with the index’s 20.3% fall.
Total return of fund vs sector and indices over 10yrs
Source: FE Analytics
Charles Younes, head of manager selection at FE fundinfo, said: “It’s been said before, but it can’t be understated how testing these past few years have been within the investment industry.
“Boselli’s success has been evident for many years, and when he retires at the end of this year, he will leave a significant and well-earned legacy behind him which will be hard for others to emulate and live up to.”
Elsewhere, Jonathan Golan of Man GLG Global Investment Grade Opportunities secured the Best New Alpha Manager title, while Alan Hsu of the Wellington Climate Strategy fund won in the Best Responsible category.
The full list of winners is in the table below.
Source: FE fundinfo
Winners are determined by narrowing down the total list of FE fundinfo Alpha-rated managers to a shortlist of the highest-scoring managers per category.
Once the shortlist has been refined, FE fundinfo’s panel selects the eventual winners. A full list of the nominees in each category can be found here.