Skandia Global Funds plc (SGF) is seeking to exploit inefficiencies in the Japanese Equity markets and under researched European companies. In so doing, it has appointed two new specialist fund mangers – 'Dalton Capital (Hong Kong) Limited' utilising the portfolio management expertise of 'FuNNeX Asset Management Inc.', for the Skandia Japanese Equity Fund and 'SVM Asset Management Limited' for the Skandia European Opportunities Fund. Both funds are sub-funds of the Dublin based investment company, SGF.

The new sub-advisers were chosen by Skandia Investment Group's (SIG) 50 strong investment analyst team, who employed their renowned 4-P research process to identify the strongest available investment managers. SIG is Skandia's new investment management organisation, which brings together all of Skandia's investment research, analysis, portfolio management, open architecture and investment product expertise.

FuNNeX was established in January 2000 by Masaru "Ken" Nishizawa and others, and currently manages $1.18 billion in assets as at 31 August 2008.

FuNNeX believes undervalued stocks will tend to outperform the market over the medium term, and through appropriate stock selection a manager can add significant alpha to investments. FuNNeX fund manager Akira Yoshimi has managed long-only value-oriented Japanese equity funds since 1988. Akira started his investment career at Daiwa International Capital Management (currently Daiwa SB Investments). He was a group leader of Japanese equity value team managing $1.6 billion for institutional clients.

Andrew Dalton, CIO of Dalton Capital (Hong Kong) Limited, said, "Skandia Investment Group employs a selection process which we consider to be one of the most thorough and rigorous in the investment management industry. We are, therefore, delighted to have been selected by them to manage the Skandia Global Funds Japanese Equity Portfolio. Our aim is to deliver consistent outperformance of the Japanese equity market for investors in this fund, and the track record of our process should give investors considerable confidence that we will continue to achieve our goal."

SVM is an independent fund management company founded in Edinburgh in 1990 by Colin McLean, Donald Robertson and Margaret Lawson and now has funds under management of $765m. SVM is an active manager, which builds original high conviction portfolios and backs its investment decisions in the quality of its research.

After the market meltdown in 2008, many believe European stocks now have attractive valuations and can offer interesting opportunities to those managers who are active stock pickers like SVM.

SVM invests in growing businesses that it believes offer outstanding value. It is not put off by investments that are unpopular or not widely researched or owned. The team says it is "open minded" and so may own 'growth' or 'value' companies at different stages of the economic cycle. This firm conducts its own fundamental research and so has an original position which is often contrarian in nature. As it seeks to identify underrated companies it tends to have a bias to medium and smaller sized companies.

SVM Fund Manager Hugh Cuthbert said, "Stock picking is at the core of our investment approach – we seek to identify the best opportunities across the investment universe."

Rob Williams, Business Development Director for SIG, said, "We are delighted to have secured the services of two excellent investment firms to take forward our Japanese Equity and European Opportunity funds. Both Dalton Capital utilising FuNNeX's portfolio management expertise and SVM offer distinctive styles – both of which we believe are greatly suited to the current investment climate."

For more information please contact your local Skandia representative.

Notes to Editors:

1.  The Skandia Japanese Equity Fund was previously run by JP Morgan Asset Management (UK) Limited while the Skandia European Opportunities Fund was previously run by Thames River Capital LLP.


2.  Skandia Global Funds (SGF)

www.skandiaglobalfunds.com

SGF was founded in 2001 and has a fund range including 23 Dublin based mutual funds, providing access to a variety of expert investment managers. SGF outsourcers the investment management of each of the funds to external investment management firms, all of whom are carefully selected and monitored by Skandia Investment Group's research analysts. The funds are available in approximately 19 countries throughout the Americas, Asia and Europe, and sold through the existing network of SGF representatives and Skandia companies as well as independent fund distributors such as banks and financial advisers. Skandia and SGF are members of the Old Mutual Group since 2006.

• Provide MultiManager blended funds and risk controlled investment solutions.
• Manage approximately 100 segregated accounts of, on average, over $200m each.
• Provide institutional mandates and single strategy funds.

• Oversees assets of c.$130bn.
• Enables the transaction of around $150m to $200m per day in funds and mandates.
• Has over 200 global fund group partners and investments in more than 2,000 funds.
• Offers research selected fund services for Skandia's guided architecture platforms.
• Sources funds for Skandia's Open Architecture platforms.
• Has around 50 researchers and portfolio managers.
• Has approximately 180 employees and significant numbers of outsourced back-office personnel.