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Invesco's UK equities closure reflected in allocator holdings

Last week it emerged Invesco is shuttering its standalone UK equities team and merging it with its European equities division to create one team.

Much of the coverage around this cited the wider lack of interest in UK equities, but the more interesting tale here is that Invesco, once a titan which bestrode UK equities, is now almost completely ignored by fund selectors in our database.

In fact Invesco's decision to take a continental approach to equities is in line with how allocators view the company since it is European equities where most of its success lies.

There are four Invesco UK equity funds in our database but the only one to have the backing of multiple fund selectors is Invesco UK Enhanced Index which, as irony would have it, is run by the company's Frankfurt-based quantitative strategies team.

The only actively managed UK equity fund which is held in our database is the £1.4bn Invesco UK Opportunities fund, which is held by one DFM.

In many ways this is quite unfortunate because Invesco's value bias - which has probably been the cause of their recent struggles - has actually led to the Invesco UK Opportunities fund performing strongly more recently.

So if fund selectors are not going to Invesco for UK equities anymore, what are they getting from it instead? Well, it's two most popular funds in our database are Invesco European Equity Income and Invesco Asian - both held in four portfolios.

In fact Oliver Collin, who runs the Invesco European Equity Income fund, will shortly become co-head of UK and European equities (alongside Martin Walker) so in this respect the fund selectors in our database have been ahead of the curve.

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