(January 4 – 09:10 ET) – Phillips, Hager & North Investment Management Ltd. is seeking unitholder approval to merge the Phillips, Hager & North Euro-Pacific Equity Fund with the Overseas Equity Fund.

PH&N expects that unitholder meetings to approve the proposed merger will be held on February 14 in Vancouver. If approved, it is expected that the merger will be effective on or about February. The fund company says the merger will be effected on a tax-deferred basis and will result in unitholders of the Euro-Pacific Equity Fund receiving units of the Overseas Equity Fund in exchange for their existing units.

The merger is being proposed in connection with changes to PH&N’s overall global investment strategy. According to PH&N President and CEO Tom Bradley, “Globalization has changed the way we look at investing outside North America. We are implementing changes to enhance our global investment resources in terms of people, process and products.”

PH&N says its Global Equity Research team is already one of the largest in Canada, employing nine professionals with an average of twelve years of investment experience, and the firm will continue to recruit high calibre analysts.

This team is organized by industry sector specialization across international markets and implements a disciplined investment process that focuses on sector allocation and stock selection using the Quality Growth style that the firm has used traditionally in North America.

“Globalization means that in every sector, companies are competing cross-border for customers. Our goal is to recognize which industries are growing profitably, and to select the best quality growth companies within those industries,” says Geoffrey Randells, vice president responsible for the Global Equity Research team.

This investment process replaces the firm’s former approach to markets outside North America, utilized in the Euro-Pacific Equity Fund, which focuses on active country allocation, implemented through buying and selling of baskets of stocks that replicate the selected countries’ indices.

Bradley comments, “This former approach was valid until accelerated globalization began to change the way equity markets interrelate. Country allocation used to be the single most important decision in investment returns. Today, business cycles are increasingly correlated between different countries and economic regions. Global sector allocation and stock selection are increasingly important.”
-IE Staff