Orbis Investment’s Bermudian-based multi-asset investment team has been named fund manager of the year by British magazine Investment Week.

This is the third consecutive year that Orbis director and portfolio manager Alec Cutler and his team have won the award for the 40 to 85 per cent shares category. They beat 229 other funds, with the Orbis Global Balanced Fund.

The team also won the same award for the lower risk 20 to 60 per cent shares category for the first time against 196 other funds, with the Orbis Global Cautious Fund.

Orbis said that while the award was based on several measures, investment performance was an obvious factor.

“Here both funds have far outdistanced their peer groups over all time frames,” a spokesman for the firm said.

Mr Cutler said performance across its $7 billion in global multi-asset funds was particularly pleasing because it had been produced during a period when their value investment style has been very out of favour.

“We have had to scratch and claw out our performance against benchmarks loaded with United States mega cap tech stocks,” he said. “That has felt like high-altitude training. Hopefully, we will see valuation matter again sometime soon. This will make life easier for all of the Orbis funds.”

He said Orbis’s Global Balanced and Global Cautious funds beat the odds by buying up European and Asian defence stocks at a time when investors and politicians saw little need to invest in defence and deterrence.“

Similarly the firm bought into critical electricity infrastructure during the wind and solar craze.

“Ninety-per cent of the time a cheap stock or bond is beaten up for a good reason but sometimes we find excellent companies that the market has cast aside for really bad reasons,” Mr Cutler said.

Orbis said the funds had also benefited by maintaining significant gold exposure.

“We bought gold starting in 2018 at under $1,000, as we started to worry about government debt levels and lack of spending prudence,” Mr Cutler said. “Lending money to governments that were spending like drunken sailors, at the low yields on offer seemed like reward-free risk to us.

“Gold, on the other hand, would prove a good place to hide should they continue to spend at pace. Spend they have.”

He said as predicted bonds had proved very risky and gold had shined bright.

Mr Cutler credited the Bermudian-based multi-asset investment team including: Ashley Pacheco, Timo Smuts, Romari Tucker, Robyn Carroll, Ariana Curling, Jeffrey Miyamoto, Londa Nxumalo, Mark Dunley-Owen and Graeme Forster.