Key Morningstar Metrics for CI Global Leaders Corporate Class
- : BronzeMorningstar Medalist Rating
- : Above AverageProcess Pillar
- : Above AveragePeople Pillar
- : AverageParent Pillar
CI Global Leaders remains a differentiated global equity strategy that draws on a veteran management team and a disciplined, long-term investment philosophy. The strategy’s benchmark-agnostic design and concentrated positioning mean it is not intended to provide broad market exposure, a feature that has challenged recent results but remains central to its long-term approach.
Black Creek Investment Management has subadvised CI Global Leaders since 2006. Portfolio managers Bill Kanko and Heather Peirce bring decades of shared experience and apply a patient, fundamental approach. Kanko, though closer to retirement, remains fully engaged, while Peirce is well-positioned to assume greater leadership, given her long tenure working with him. The team is supported by an eight-member group of seasoned generalist analysts whose incentives are closely aligned with long-term results.
The strategy’s edge comes from the depth of its research, which gives the team confidence to invest in underfollowed businesses with potential to deliver differentiated returns. The approach is grounded in conservative long-term cash flow forecasting to identify stocks where short-term concerns mask durable competitive advantages. The managers typically hold a concentrated portfolio of 25-30 stocks, with minimal overlap with the Morningstar Global Markets Index by weight, resulting in an active share of roughly 99%. Portfolio exposures are determined from the bottom up, typically resulting in large overweightings in industrials and Japan alongside a pronounced underweighting in the US versus the index. The team favors less-followed companies, which leads the portfolio away from dominant mega-cap benchmark constituents and toward underrepresented mid-cap holdings.
Over Kanko’s tenure from July 2006 through February 2026, the F share class delivered a 9.7% annualized return, outperforming the average global equity peer by 2.6 percentage points while modestly lagging the global markets Morningstar Category index. More recently, the strategy fell into the bottom quartile over the three years ended February 2026 due to sustained underweight exposure to US mega-cap technology. Investors should expect divergence from the index at times, particularly during narrow market leadership, but over longer periods, the strategy’s merits should shine.
CI Global Leaders Corporate Class: Performance Highlights
Bill Kanko has trounced peers over his tenure, though recent performance has weighed on long-term index-relative results.
Since Kanko’s start from July 2006 through February 2026, the F share class gained 9.7% annualized, outperforming the global equity Morningstar Category peer norm by 2.6 percentage points but trailing the Morningstar Global Markets Index by 0.3 percentage points. On a risk-adjusted basis, using the Sharpe ratio, the strategy also beat peers but lagged the index. These results were achieved with a structurally higher allocation to international stocks than the index, reflecting the team’s impressive stock-selection skill outside the US.
More recently, results have been unusually weak. Over the three-year period through February 2026, the fund gained 11.4% annualized, trailing the Morningstar Global Markets Index by 9.4 percentage points and its average peer by 4.6 percentage points, ranking in the bottom quartile of its peer group. Underperformance was concentrated in 2023 and 2024, when the portfolio’s lack of exposure to soaring mega-cap technology stocks and meaningful underweighting in the US were significant headwinds. Peer-relative results stabilized in 2025, rising to the third quartile, though the strategy continued to lag the category index.
Such periods of underperformance aren’t unexpected given the managers’ willingness to differ from the index, and while that positioning has recently stung, it has conversely offered great upside during years like 2016 and 2017 and downside mitigation in 2022.
