Doing the right thing and going green

FUND MANAGER Q&A: RICHARD POWER,Dolmen Stockbrokers www.dolmenstockbrokers.ie

Richard Power has worked with Dolmen Stockbrokers for 10 years and has managed the Green Effects fund (www.greeneffects.ie) since 2003. Prior to joining Dolmen, he worked for Société Générale.

What is your investment approach?

The stocks in the Green Effects fund are chosen from a German ethical index, the NAI, that was set up in 1997 by a mixture of business and academic people. This index provides us with a basket of 30 ethical stocks in which we’re allowed to invest.

In terms of geographic exposure, the Green Effects fund currently has about 30 per cent of its assets allocated to the US, 20 per cent in the euro zone, 15 per cent in Asia, 10 per cent in Australasia and the remainder in a few other countries.

The fund is invested across sectors such as alternative energy, water, wind, solar power and waste management.

How has your fund performed?

In the four months to the end of April, the fund has delivered a return of 10.44 per cent.

At the end of April, the fund’s absolute performance for one year was 33.6 per cent. Its two-year return was 1.6 per cent and over three years it was down 14.3 per cent. In each of the three years, it outperformed the average return for the Irish ethical and energy funds sector.

What is your outlook?

Obviously the last week has been quite volatile but our view still remains quite positive for the next six to 12 months, both for the fund and in general.

We’ve been positive on US equity markets, and we continue to maintain that view.

Financial markets have been quite volatile over the last while over fears of contagion of sovereign risk in government bond markets. But if we look outside of that, first-quarter earnings in the US and Europe have been very strong, and big companies with global presences and strong balance sheets have reported good earnings and their earnings outlook for the rest of the year remains strong.

• In conversation with Caroline Madden