Zenith Investment Partners has given 13 international share funds offered by a total six fund managers its top rating of highly recommended after a review of 180 products world wide.
The managers that received the top rating were Independent Franchise Partners (IFP), Walter Scott, Magellan Financial Group, Platinum Asset Management and Lazard.
Zenith also awarded 45 funds a recommended rating, which brings the total number of recommended funds to 58.
"While international shares benchmarks have produced poor performance over an extended period, several highly active international shares managers have produced strong absolute returns for investors despite encountering volatile investment markets and an appreciating Australian dollar, which has acted to reduce the value of unhedged overseas stock holdings," Zenith's head of research Ben Davis said.
"We believe our highly recommended global equity managers have the skill to exploit inefficiencies in markets and generate strong returns for investors," Davis said.
"The use of these funds in a broad range of client model portfolios has ensured that manager selection has also been a major contributor to portfolio returns."
Davis said that although the funds will underperform their benchmarks from time to time, retail investors were more likely to be concerned with absolute risk/return outcomes.
"This is demonstrated by the outstanding retail support of Platinum Asset Management, which has raised over $17 billion with little institutional investment," Davis said.
The review saw five funds have their ratings upgraded.
The IFP Global Franchise Fund, both its hedged and unhedged versions, the Platinum Unhedged Fund and the Magellan Global Fund went from recommended to highly recommended.
In addition the K2 Select International Absolute Return Fund went from approved to recommended.
Downgrades included the Colonial First State Wholesale Global Resources Fund, the Martin Currie Global Alpha Fund and the Schroder Global Emerging Markets Fund, which all went from highly recommended to recommended.
