Aberdeen's Kaloo: Robust Chinese currency hurt our funds last year

Did not expect the RMB to hold up

Aberdeen's head of global emerging markets Devan Kaloo has admitted his underweight position in China was unexpectedly damaging for fund performance last year, as the country's currency held up.

Kaloo (pictured) said he did not expect China's currency to remain robust, as authorities had stepped in to devalue the yuan. As a result, the £1.3bn Emerging Markets Equity and £790m Emerging Markets Smaller Companies funds were hit by this underweight, as well as exposure to the Brazilian real, another painful position for the portfolios. Kaloo said: "For our large-cap fund, stock selection has been very good but we saw a major headwind on the currency side. Being underweight in China has cost us - the currency has held up. "The story is similar for smaller companies. Stock selec...