Telecommunications Fund Run By Lc Grad Reboundso
You’re a serious mutual fund investor, and you’ve covered your bases with first-rate growth, value and international funds. What’s next?
It’s time to pick your first supplemental fund to spice up your returns. A promising candidate is G.T. Global Telecommunications Fund (800-824-1580), a worldwide play on the equally explosive arena of telecommunications.
The fund capitalizes on two areas - America’s information superhighway and the development of telecommunications infrastructures abroad.
In the former camp, holdings include the likes of cable giant TeleCommunications Inc. and Worldcom, the nation’s fourth-biggest longdistance company. In the latter, the fund holds issues such as Buenos Aires-based Telecom Argentina and DDI, Japan’s second-largest cellular phone service purveyor.
“Certain industries revolutionize the way we live,” says Michael Mahoney, portfolio manager of the $2.6 billion fund. “It was computers in the last 10 years. It will be telecommunications in the next 10 years.”
Mahoney, a 1978 graduate of Lewis and Clark High School, has caught a hot trend. Since its inception in January 1992, the San Franciscobased fund has risen 54.3 percent, ranking No. 9 among 42 global funds tracked by Lipper Analytical Services.
Mahoney, who also holds degrees from Whitman College and Stanford University, has managed the fund for most of that period.
The fund stumbled to a 7 percent first-quarter loss, but rebounded nicely this quarter with a gain of more than 10 percent.
The fund’s most promising prospects appear to be companies heavily involved or likely to be involved in expanding the telecommunications infrastructures of emerging nations.
The deregulation of telecommunications in more developed markets also occupies much of Mahoney’s attention.
In the United States, for example, the reintroduction of major telecommunications legislation in Congress continues to stimulate deal-making related to the information superhighway.
, DataTimes