Martin Currie has spread some festive cheer by opening its new fund, a global emerging markets SICAV, to investors.

The Martin Currie Global Emerging Markets Fund is managed by Kim Catechis and co-managers Alastair Reynolds and Divya Mathur, and will be benchmarked against the MSCI Emerging Markets index.

The fund will hold 40 to 60 stocks in a multi-cap portfolio, and in a statement the group said it would be 'unconstrained at a country and sector level'.

The managers will be supported by Martin Currie's global emerging markets research team, whose members have between them visited all four BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) as well as Indonesia, Korea and Mexico in the past year.

Kim Catechis, head of the Martin Currie global emerging markets team, said, ‘We believe that despite the current global economic headwinds, the long-term investment case for emerging-market equities remains entirely intact – and the opportunity set remains vast. Our focus continues to be on individual companies with distinct competitive advantages, resilient balance sheets and well-founded growth.

‘Developing countries such as China, Brazil and India do face an ongoing battle to balance growth, inflation and credit availability, and the market has clearly taken a more bearish stance lately. However, in reality there has been very little change in fundamentals, and this is reflected in our investment positioning,' he added.

Catechis and his entire investment team joined Martin Currie from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership in 2010.

The fund’s annual management charge is 1.5 per cent, with an initial charge of up to 5 per cent. It is available in US dollar, sterling and euro share classes.