Aleš Lokar received four Zvezdonos awards for management of the KD Galileo and KD Rastko funds in three- and five-year periods. Two other members of the managers’ team of KD Funds, the best management company, were ranked among the top 11 managers in Slovenia: David Zorman (4th place) and Primož Cencelj (8th place).

KD Funds, the first management company in Slovenia established in 1994, also manages the first Slovenian mutual fund, KD Galileo. From its very beginnings, KD Funds has been committed to the highest standards of excellence, as confirmed by the many awards presented both in Slovenia and abroad.
This year’s highest award – five stars – went to the following winning funds:

for a three-year period:
• KD MM, money market – EUR.
• KD Galileo, mixed – global flexible.
• KD First Selection, equity – global.
• KD Rastko, equity – European.

for a five-year period:
• KD MM, money market – EUR.
• KD Bond, bond – European.
• KD Galileo, mixed – global flexible.
• KD First Selection, equity – global.
• KD Rastko, equity – European.
• KD New Markets, equity – emerging markets.

Luka Podlogar, President of the Management Board of KD Funds, is genuinely happy about the new awards: “We have proven once more that we are on the right track. Our focus is on our customers and the returns we yield, and the awards simply testify to the excellence of our fund management team. We have been achieving this thanks to our professional and high-quality management, which is the core of all our endeavours. Our customers recognise this. Our goal for the future is to remain the leading management company in Slovenia and the region. We will do our utmost to justify the trust placed in us by our investors.”

One of the awards went to KD Galileo, the first and oldest Slovenian mutual fund that this year is celebrating its 25th anniversary. This pioneering fund successfully paved the way in the Slovenian fund market. From 1 January 1992 till today, it has been trusted by over 52,000 investors, and with the current EUR 125 million assets under management it is the third largest mutual fund in Slovenia. In the 25 years of its operation, the fund has seen and been part of the Slovenian capital market development, the rise of capital markets as well as the financial crisis and the gradual recovery.

Today, the KD Galileo global mixed flexible fund is one of the 16 subfunds of the KD Umbrella Fund. Its excellence in asset management has been affirmed with numerous domestic and international awards.

KD Galileo is managed by Aleš Lokar, who has 20 years’ experience in finance. He worked as an analyst, asset manager and stockbroker for the BPH and PM&A stockbroking companies. From 2005, he was employed as an asset manager in the KD BPD stockbroking company. Since March 2008, he has been Senior Portfolio Manager at KD Funds. He is in charge of managing our two oldest and biggest funds, KD Galileo and KD Rastko, as well as KD Dividend.

In Slovenia 250 funds are marketed by 17 different providers. KD Funds is the management company that has been presented with the highest number of awards to date. This year’s winners with the best rating, i.e. five stars, include:

• KD RASTKO, the best European equity fund in the last three years,
• KD NEW MARKETS, the best emerging markets equity fund in the last three years,
• KD MM, the best money market – EUR fund in the last five years,
• KD EASTERN EUROPE, the best European emerging markets equity fund in the last three and five years,
• KD INDIA – CHINA, the best Asia and Oceania emerging markets equity fund in the last three and five years,
• KD BALKANS, the best Balkans equity fund in the last three and five years.
  As many as four KD Funds managers ranked among the best managers in the last three-year period, namely Luka Flere (3rd place), Sašo Šmigić (7th place), Aleš Lokar (8th place) and Primož Cencelj (12th place). Sašo Šmigić has consistently ranked on the best managers chart throughout the five-year period in which the Moje finance magazine has been presenting its awards. The main criterion for the best manager is their knowledge and/or the so-called ‘information indicator’, which shows by how much the manager has exceeded the relevant benchmark characterised by the same investment structure and risk. In the latter category, i.e. exceeding our own benchmark, KD Funds has been evaluated as the best management company; in a three-year period we exceeded the relevant benchmark with 10 out of the 11 assessed subfunds, and in a five year-period we did this with four of our subfunds.Luka Podlogar, President of the Management Board of KD Funds, says: “The awards along with the performance rates yielded by our funds testify to our team’s excellence in management, which makes us very proud. We are aware how important high-quality management is and are determined to do our best to justify the trust of our investors in the future, too.”

  

  (from left to right: Primož Cencelj, Aleš Lokar, Luka Podlogar, Grega Meden, Sašo Šmigić, Luka Flere)

  The Moje finance selection has been performed for five consecutive years. This year the magazine focused on 248 funds marketed in Slovenia (for three- and five-year periods) and awarded them stars for their achievements; 11 KD Funds subfunds were rewarded. The Best Fund Manager award went to David Zorman already in 2010, and to Primož Cencelj in 2013, both representing KD Funds. KD Funds was also recognised as the best management company in 2013. The aim of presenting the stars is to help investors choose from among the numerous funds marketed in Slovenia. The many awards presented to KD Funds by the Moje finance magazine are proof of our excellence and expertise.

We have experienced 82 exciting competition days: final voting closed on 21 November, and on Monday, 24 November 2014, we announced the winner at a ceremony held at the Vivo Catering premises in Ljubljana. The winner of the Everything=Possible! competition is the Calypso project, and the winning idea of the Enterprise challenge, rewarded by the company Si.Mobil with EUR 5,000 worth of products and services, is the project BrightLes, or BrightWood in English. A lucky winner was also selected among those who voted for the project, and was rewarded with 6-months’ use of a Fiat 500c leased by the competition partner Veit Team.

The competition organiser, KD Funds, together with its partners and the 8-member jury has for the second consecutive year motivated Slovenia to think in terms of inspiring projects, set daring goals and create great teams. Luka Podlogar, the President of the Management Board, commented upon the announcement of the competition winner: “We at KD Funds are aware of our engagement with the local and global environment. We know that in addition to doing responsible business, taking up activities in the field of corporate responsibility is our obligation. We wish to co-shape the environment where bold projects expressing courage, clear goals and inspiration turn into success stories. For us, organising this competition means investing in development. And because everything is possible, we believe that the projects taking part in our competition may have the potential to become the future generators of economic growth in the region. The winners of today’s competition are aspiring researchers who believe that knowledge brings progress and that with every step they take in their projects they are pushing the boundaries of what is possible, millimetre by millimetre. Congratulations to the Calypso team!”.

The winners of the second Everything=Possible! competition are students from the Gimnazija Vič secondary school. For three years they have been working on a submarine that will make it possible to explore the very last undiscovered of our planet hiding deep below the surface of the sea. They called the submarine Calypso and sent it out to explore the Slovenian sea this summer. After the successful trial, the submarine will now be moved to a new hydrodynamic shell. It is the work of 40 courageous students who spend their afternoons in the school workshop, researching, inventing and pushing the boundaries millimetre by millimetre at each session. Miha Majetič, a student representing the winning Calypso project, says: “Of course we are thrilled about the prize. Seeing how many people support us and our work gives us even more enthusiasm to keep creating. We will first complete our Calypso submarine, which we plan to launch in the Slovenian sea in March next year. And then we will go on with new technical projects. We are definitely not running out of ideas, and we are already looking forward to new challenges”.

In addition to the main prize, an extra prize was presented in the Everything=Possible! competition. The Si.Mobil jury selected their own winner of the Enterprise challenge, namely the project entitled BrightWood, and presented the young innovators with a prize of EUR 5,000 worth of products and services. The project is about an innovative wood products line that creates a synergy of wood and light.

For more information about the project, go to http://www.vsejemogoce.si/

KD Skladi (KD Funds in English) is Slovenia’s foremost fund management operation. It is part of KD Group, one of the country’s largest investment, insurance, capital investments and fund management groups with over €1bn assets under management at the group level, of which around half lies within the asset management division. It also claims an impressive list of firsts in a region where investing in funds is a relatively new phenomenon. It runs the country’s oldest mutual fund KD Galileo and created Slovenia’s first fund of funds and money market fund.KD Skladi was established in 1994 as the first Slovenian asset manager. It took over the running of the Galileo fund two years later. The fund in January 2012 celebrated its twentieth anniversary with pleasing results for investors in its top-down, bottom-up flexible global portfolio. Over the fund’s lifetime, initial investors made more money than they would have tracking the MSCI World or MSCI Emerging Markets indices. Returns were higher than those of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway fund, despite the devastating effects of the financial crisis on portfolio values. Since Slovenia joined the European Union in 2004, KD Skladi has developed its investment skills and reach. It now runs 14 funds covering global, emerging, regional and country- and sector-specific remits. It has also attracted a growing number of European investors to its locally domiciled funds that specialise in South East European equities. The KD Balkans fund typifies the firm’s approach to markets in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Some markets are already classified as emerging and well integrated with the EU. Others remain outside, either on the path to integration or remaining true frontier market status. Croatia is expected to join the EU in July this year.