Schroders starts buying back into stocks

By Raji Menon

LONDON (Reuters) - Fund manager Schroders said it has started buying back into equities as it scouts for fresh evidence of an improvement in the global outlook before ramping up its equity exposure even further.

The group had revised its negative view on the markets and moved to a more neutral stance, its Chief Investment Officer Alan Brown told Reuters.

"We have reduced our underweight position to equities to get ourselves close to neutral at the end of last year," he said.

"But it's all very early days. I don't think anybody would feel confident saying that we are out of the woods yet."

Brown said Schroders would move to an overweight in equities once it felt that policy initiatives taken by governments globally were working.

"Can we be confident that we are facing just one horrible year of economic news but we will get back to growth next year? That's the question that we want to see resolved. But we are not convinced yet - there are some few encouraging signs but we need to see a bit more," he said.

Schroders has some 114.7 billion pounds of global assets, and Brown said the fund manager had made the changes across the board in the firm's active portfolios.

He added that although there are some positive signs emerging globally, there was still some way to go before markets returned to normal.