Eagle Star European Growth

Advantages: Impressive growth
Disadvantages: Five and half % initial charge

...This is a large fund , managed by Rory Powe. It has been a star performer in the Invesco range of products since its launch in 1985. Provided you see a future for European growth , there is no reason why this fund should not be a bed rock of a well managed portfolio. Powe invests in technology , for example there is a large stakeholding in Nokia , but he also looks for smaller emerging companies which will represent value shares as they grow . The price of the units has fallen this year , but this is only representative of the volatility of the market , and does not reflect the under lying value of the fund.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: European exposure
Disadvantages: poor performance

...Since the Peter Young debacle, the European Growth unit trust has underperformed its peer group by a significant margin. There has been very little in the way of explanation or apology for this, and this poor performance has come at a time when growth stocks have done well relative to the market yet this trust has scarcely performed well next to the total European index. On top of this we have to endure the extortionate charges !!! Some fund managers offer reduced fees post poor performance, too encourage keeping the money with them or even performance -related fees... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Excellent management, very good performance.
Disadvantages: Now a fairly large fund.

...At just over a billion pounds, this fund is three times the size of the average for the sector but only a third of the size of the largest in the sector. With 225% growth over 5 years and 525% over 10 years it has outperformed the sector average by a factor of 1.5. Richard Pease's management has kept this fund in the first quartile for most of the last eight years, not returning less than 15% annual growth since 1992. It currently forms a small but growing part of my portfolio, with my main European funds being T.U. European and Invesco GT European Growth. Jupiter have an extremely good reputation and, (according to the Jupiter Report from Hargreaves Lansdown) despite recent occurrences, their managers have been secured for the foreseeable future, and are not expected to defect to anything set up by John Duffield, Jupiter's former... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful