Artisan Global Value Banks on the Financial Sector

This fund is a top performer among global funds.

Anjelica Tan's avatar
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Financial firms around the world have come a long way since the 2008 crisis. That has been a blessing for Artisan Global Value (symbol ARTGX, which has a 28% stake in the sector. Over the past three years, Global Value has beaten 97% of its peers (funds that invest in U.S. and foreign stocks). It also topped the MSCI All Country World index by an average of six percentage points per year.

The fund holds 45 stocks. MasterCard (MA), its best performer, has nearly quadrupled over the past three years and recently announced a ten-for-one stock split. More recently, London-based Lloyds Banking Group (LYG) has been a big contributor, climbing more than 60% over the past 12 months.

Co-managers Dan O’Keefe and David Samra look for high-quality, under­valued, midsize-to-large com­panies with solid balance sheets. Strong executives are also important, says O’Keefe, who travels about 100,000 miles a year to meet with company officials. Once the managers have whittled down the list of acceptable names, they invest in those with the healthiest free cash flow (cash that’s left over after the capital expenditures needed to maintain the business) and the strongest competitive positions in their industries.

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Global Value currently has half of its $1.4 billion in assets in domestic stocks. About 20% of assets are in the United Kingdom, and the rest are spread among developed countries in Europe and Asia. At last word, the fund’s top holdings were Oracle (ORCL), the Bank of New York Mellon (BK) and Microsoft (MSFT).

Anjelica Tan
Anjelica Tan
Reporter, Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Tan joined Kiplinger in June 2012 from Bloomberg News, where she was a reporting intern covering mergers and acquisitions and IPOs in New York. Prior to that, she worked as a production intern at CNN in Washington, D.C., where she assisted with political research and live broadcasts. She also covered financial regulation, including the Dodd-Frank Act, as a reporter for the Medill News Service. Before that, she wrote about economics and commodities in Chicago. She has written for the New York Times, MarketWatch, Businessweek.com, United Press International and the San Francisco Chronicle. She holds a BBA in finance from the University of Michigan and an MS in journalism from Northwestern University.