Key Morningstar Metrics for Manulife Global Equity Class Series F
- : SilverMorningstar Medalist Rating
- : Above AverageProcess Pillar
- : Above AveragePeople Pillar
- : Above AverageParent Pillar
Following significant changes in July 2025, the Mawer Global Equity team and portfolio are settling under new leadership. The strategy’s Pillar ratings remain unchanged. The strategy is also available as Mawer Global Equity.
A series of developments in July 2025 reshaped the team, sparked by the poor performance of this flagship strategy. Paul Moroz stepped in as lead manager, taking over from Christian Deckart, who has since left the firm. Moroz first led the strategy from 2009 until 2021 and served as Mawer’s chief investment officer from 2018 until 2024. David Ragan was also added as a credible number two, and he has just as much experience as Moroz. Manar Hassan-Agha retains his duties as a comanager. The firm intends to keep this structure moving forward.
The strategy generally follows Mawer’s investment philosophy, rooted in quality companies with excellent management teams and durable economic moats. To that end, Moroz leverages the work of more than two dozen investment professionals at the firm who cover different regions and market capitalizations, helpful for a global equity strategy with a wide investable universe. Tens of thousands of notes, housed in a centralized database, document every step in an analyst’s bottom-up due diligence and every manager’s decision on those names. Multiple individuals score companies based on attributes like management quality to determine a quality score. A Monte Carlo simulation provides a range of intrinsic values. Companies covered are then compared against their quality score and return potential to help Moroz size positions.
In less than a year, the portfolio has changed meaningfully. Mawer gives managers discretion to disagree with the judgment of the analysts, but Moroz instead has aimed for greater collaboration to diminish some biases his predecessor displayed that left the strategy exposed in key areas. Underweightings in artificial intelligence and defense contractors were two such themes, represented among the 43 names added between June 2025 and March 2026. The number of holdings expanded to 79 as of March 2026 from 56 in June 2025, in line with what Moroz maintained during his previous decade-plus tenure.
Returns have yet to rebound, but it has been less than a year. Indeed, performance during Moroz’s first stint was excellent. From November 2009 through September 2021, the Manulife Global Equity Class F share class returned 13.4%, which beat the MSCI ACWI benchmark by 1.8 percentage points. Downside protection was also strong, with the fund only capturing 87.5% of the index’s losses over that same period.
Manulife Global Equity Class: Performance Highlights
It is still too early to judge performance in Paul Moroz’s second stint.
From August 2025 through April 2026, the Manulife Global Equity Class F shares returned 8.1%, lagging the MSCI ACWI by 12.7 percentage points and ranking in the bottom quartile of the global-equity category. While that result is poor, part of this time included a restructuring of the portfolio as it transitioned away from its former manager. Year-to-date performance has been a relative improvement, with the fund beating 40% of category peers. In a sense, some underperformance is understandable as the strategy has typically lagged in rallies and shone in drawdowns.
The fund had enjoyed more than a decade of success under Moroz’s previous leadership. From November 2009 until he stepped down as lead manager at the end of September 2021, the fund returned 13.4%, which ranked in the top quartile of the category and beat the MSCI ACWI by 1.8 percentage points. This also came with a lower level of risk, with the fund only capturing 87.5% of the index’s losses over that same stretch. Indeed, strong downside protection has persisted early in Moroz’s second stint despite challenged performance in up markets.
Moroz has set up tangible expectations moving forward. He aims to have a portfolio beta (a measure of sensitivity to an index) between 0.90 and 1.00, an achievable target given that it was 0.89 over his first stint. That range would imply smaller swings relative to the market. To this point, he has thus far matched that expectation less than a year in. From August 2025 through April 2026, beta was 0.93.
