Funds in brief

GSAM builds bric fund Goldman Sachs Asset Management has finally released its long-awaited Brics Portfolio, launched under the Ucits III legislation, giving retail investors access to the economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. GSAM’s investment banking parent first identified this area in 2001, but insiders said they are not too late to market the concept to distributors, because this is a “50-year story.” Germany’s DWS launched a Bric fund last year, and French group BNP Paribas is expected to follow suite during 2006. Nordea’s baltic BRIEF Nordea’s Luxembourg-domiciled open-ended Sicav range of funds has extended its registration to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This means Nordea’s equity, bond, balanced and money market funds will be available through Nordea retail branch networks in the Baltics. Nordea says it has rapidly expanded its banking operations in the Baltic states, with a current market share of 10 per cent, and expecting to double this and numbers of branches by 2008-09. Nordea’s head of European distribution, Bjorn Barbesgaard, says Baltic expansion is integral to his strategy. Small cap euro debut Threadneedle has started to market its pan-European smaller companies fund across the continent. It is benchmarked against the HSBC Smaller European Companies Index, which has a 30 per cent UK weighting, but is driven entirely by stock selection. It held 50 stocks when launched at the end of November 2005, but the portfolio is expected to become less concentrated as the fund size grows.