German open-ended funds in liquidation are underperforming their active peers and showing far more varied results, according to IPD data released on Wednesday.

German open-ended funds in liquidation are underperforming their active peers and showing far more varied results, according to IPD data released on Wednesday.

In March, the group of funds in liquidation - included in IPD’s German Monthly Open-Ended Property Fund Index (OFIX) - returned -0.8%, in contrast to 0.2% for active OFIX funds. The 17 German open-ended funds in liquidation have to sell some €19 bn of assets by 2017, representing 9 million m2 largely located in Europe (7 million m2).

Daniel Piazolo, vice president and managing director of IPD Germany, said: ‘There is a large spread between the returns of the different funds in liquidation with the worst performing fund producing a total return of -21.6% in the last 12 months, whereas the fund in liquidation with the best performance generated a return of -0.9% in the last year. This shows that these funds face quite different challenges and follow varying strategies in how to tackle the liquidation process. The spread between the performance of the active funds is far smaller, with the best active funds showing an annual total return of 5.5% and the worst active fund a total return of -0.9%.’

For all funds, the IPD OFIX showed a return of 0% for March, with the sub-index for globally invested funds returning 0.3%. These outperformed funds focused on Germany and those mainly invested in European markets, which returned 0.2% and -0.1% respectively.