Artemis is launching a ‘best ideas’ European equity fund on 17 October. 

The Artemis European Opportunities Fund will invest in around 60 stocks, aiming to provide investors with long-term capital growth. It will invest across Europe, excluding the UK.

Benchmarked against the FTSE European ex UK index, the Ucits III fund, managed by Mark Page and Laurent Millet, will adopt a bottom-up stock-picking approach to drive performance with sector and geographical exposure playing a secondary role.

Page says the case for investing in European equities is ‘clear’. ‘With some of the most consistent creators of shareholder value trading at “value” type multiples, there is a great deal of bad news already in the price. The average European company is trading at a significant discount to historic and relative values,’ he says.

Page adds that his team sees huge opportunities to separate good and bad companies in Europe. He comments: ‘European equities have underperformed cash and government bonds for the last 10 years and now offer very good value. Investors are worried (rightly) about the top-down issues and want safety at any cost. But in the process, they overlook the bottom-up opportunities.’

The minimum investment of the fund is £1,000 and the annual management charge for the retail share class is 1.5 per cent.