EUROPE- Fidelity Investments is extending the coverage of its Select Global Fund by registering it in France, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The Select fund, a sub fund of the international OEIC, was registered in the UK at the end of February as a pooled vehicle whereas previously it was available only on a segregated basis.

Registration in Switzerland and the Netherlands should be complete next week, France at the beginning of May. “Our approach is to outperform the benchmark and the goal is to provide consistency opposed to huge returns,” says the manager Cesar Hernandez.

The fund aims to avoid style and macroeconomic biases and, by using quantitative techniques, the portfolio ends up with a similar risk profile to its benchmark, the MSCI world index.

Hernandez says the investment approach is between active and passive but that with an outperformance target of 2%, it offers more that enhanced investing. “We’re coming at this from the active end of the spectrum,” he says.

Hernandez believes the mixed fortunes of balanced and value managers in the last five years has led pension funds to re-evaluate their manager line up. “Only large plans are able to have both value and growth managers. This is neither growth nor value but somewhere in the middle,” he says.

Three and five year annualised returns for Select Global assets are a respective 2.7% and 2.1% with an average tracking error of roughly 2%. Fidelity launched the Select pooled fund in Australia and New Zealand five years ago and will register the fund in other countries European including Austria, Germany, Ireland and Scandinavia

Fidelity managed Select equity assets of e28bn at the end of 2001.