BlackRock Global Equity Absolute Return Fund

The BlackRock Global Equity Absolute Return fund was launched in December 2018 and is co-managed by James Bristow who co-heads the global equity team at BlackRock and Gareth Williams. The fund is a concentrated global long-short portfolio which is unconstrained in approach. Allocations are broadly bottom-up with sector and regional exposures largely driven by stock selection. The strategy is built upon the underlying philosophy that pricing anomalies are most prevalent and exploitable at the individual stock level and the team look to capitalise on these market inefficiencies through fundamental research. Research is undertaken to identify the key drivers of share prices. On top of fundamental analysis which includes financial statement analysis and modelling (while incorporating ESG analysis), the team do extensive 'ecosystem' research. The aim of this is to understand a company's position in the industry value chain and to identify key areas of opportunity or growth, and ultimately find related mispriced assets. Investments are split into two buckets within the portfolio. Core ideas are long-term, multi-year positions and account for70-80% of gross exposure. Whilst, the team retain the flexibility to invest tactically and the tactical bucket focuses on companies with an upcoming inflection/catalyst and are held for 6-12 months. Shorts are used in two ways, firstly to generate alpha by shorting companies whose fundamentals and earnings are being disrupted or threatened and where the risks are asymmetric. Shorts are also used to hedge out, partially or fully, particular exposures in the long book. The fund targets high single-digit net returns with a volatility between 6-8%. The fund typically has 30-50 longs combined with 40-70 short positions and a net exposure between 0-20%, though it has the flexibility to range from -30% to +40% (beta adj).