Of the 17,592 managers tracked by Citywire, only 3% currently have an AAA rating, the highest award.

But not all these top performers are in charge of large strategies. There are 108 AAA-rated managers running funds with less than $100m – of whom 92 are men and 15 women. (One manager’s gender is undefined in Citywire’s database and could not be established.)

Citywire Amplify has taken a look at three of these hidden champions.

One of them is Ninety One’s Daniel Sacks. After joining the firm in 1997 as a portfolio administrator, Sacks worked his way up to investment analyst in 1999 before becoming a manager. He is now responsible for the South African Resources strategy and Small Cap strategy as well as for the analysis of South African precious metals shares. Sacks looks after $99.3m in AUM and has been rated across 146 months – the longest period out of all the AAA-rated fund managers under $100m.

His stewardship of the Ninety One Commodity fund has underpinned much of this performance, which he has managed since October 2002. The fund invests primarily in mining, minerals, energy and natural resources companies listed in South Africa. These include Sasol at 9.3% and Impala Platinum Holdings at 6.7%. Sacks ranks ninth out of 93 managers in the Equity – Natural Resources sector over three years to 31 July, with a return of 92.2%.

Another manager to keep an eye on is Nikko Asset Management’s Grace Yan. She has been running both the Nikko AM Asian Small Mid Equity and the Nikko AM Shenton Emerging Enterprise Discovery funds since 2017. After becoming eligible for her first rating, an AAA, in January 2021, she then retained it for 20 consecutive months.

Her Nikko AM Asian Small Mid Equity fund invests primarily in small to medium-sized companies that are listed, or have their registered offices in Asia, excluding Japan, or that generate a predominant share of their sales and/or profits in Asia. Taiwan accounts for 21.9% of its assets, with 18.8% invested in consumer discretionary. Its largest holdings are Phoenix Mills and Indian Hotels, at 2.7% each. Yan ranks first out of 29 managers in the Equity – Asia Pacific Small & Medium Companies sector over three years, with a return of 74.6%.

Finally, we have Valter Bianchi Filho, who manages Brazilian equities strategy Fundamenta FIA, with a fund size of $7.7m. He’s been rated AAA since becoming eligible for a rating in June. He has been running the fund since its inception in 2010 and is one of the co-founders of Fundamenta Investimentos. The fund invests in everything from large to small caps; its top three holdings are SLC Agrícola, Petróleo Brasileiro SA (Petrobras) and 3R Petroleum Óleo e Gás.

He currently ranks seventh out of 184 managers in the Equity – Brazil sector, achieving a three-year return of 16.83% vs the -8.93% return of the MSCI Brazil GR USD index (both figures in USD).