When selecting funds, it can pay to look beyond the big brands to the smaller boutique names, whose nimbleness often allows them to punch above their weight, writes Charles Hepworth of GAM.

Tom Naughton

Tom Naughton’s Prusik Asian Equity Income focuses on equities in the Asia Pacific ex-Japan region. It is a niche strategy focusing on high yielding Asian equities that provides diversified ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) exposure to the portfolio.

Asia is the ideal place for an income fund because globally one-third of all stocks yielding more than 4% are from the region. This compares with about 20% in the US and 5% in the UK.

The fund aims to outperform the MSCI Asia Pacific ex-Japan index by 5%-10% annually. Since launch at the end of 2010 it has returned 49.2%, almost 10 times the 5.4% sector average.

Jeremy Lang and William Pattisson

Jeremy Lang (pictured) and William Pattisson’s Ardevora UK Income is a concentrated (40-stock) portfolio that stands out for the managers’ focus on behavioural issues to guide fundamental analysis.

The fund invests predominantly in UK-listed equities. During the past 12 months it returned 26.5%, compared with 14.1% on the FTSE All Share.

Pictured: William Pattisson.

Sam Armstrong

Sam Armstrong and his team at Barwon Investment Partners, based in Sydney, Australia, have a long track record in the private equity sector.

The listed private equity market can be underresearched and inefficient. Shares in listed private equity companies can have large discounts to net asset value and therefore offer many opportunities for an experienced fund manager. Listed private equity also provides a diversifying source of return to typical asset classes.

Armstrong’s Pareturn Barwon Global Listed Private Equity fund gains its exposure through listed private equity securities and investing in companies that derive most of their performance from private equity portfolios.

Jeffrey Gundlach

Jeffrey Gundlach is a US bond fund star, running around $45 billion of assets, but he is less well known over here, and the Alma Doubleline Core Plus Bond fund is a minnow among his stable, at just $62.4 million (£40.5 million). He runs the fund with Philip Barach, Bonnie Baha and Luz Padilla, and eschews the benchmark-hugging mentality common in the fixed income world.

Their expertise in the US mortgage sector means they can offer a diverse source of fixed income return, which is attractive given both the uptick in the US housing market and the low return potential in more traditional fixed income.

Gifford Coombs

Dalton Investments’ Gifford Coombs is an opportunistic investor with a deep understanding of global markets and particular experience in the US, Asia and Europe. His bottom-up, stock-picking style focuses on high-quality, undervalued companies over a long-term horizon, and has ‘protection of capital’ at the heart of its philosophy.

Schooled by Warren Buffett and with a pedigree of achieving annualised returns of 10.5% over the past 10 years in his flagship strategy Pacific and General, Coombs demonstrates the age-old Buffet adage of ‘Price is what you pay, value is what you get’.