L. (Lennard) Böckenförde MSc

This proposal documents a research outline into the topic of international mutual

funds in mutual fund families. The vast majority of the proposal details the first of three

research projects, while the other two projects are only outlined in the end. Many details

on the second and third projects depend on the outcome of the first, so that they are

not narrowly defined yet. The first project investigates the effect of international funds

in fund families on the other family funds’ performances. I attempt to show that the

initiation of an international fund positively affects the performance of domestic mutual

funds within a fund family. Further, I intend to demonstrate that this performance

increase is depended on side-by-side management of international and domestic funds

within the family. Lastly, it is shown that the better performance in domestic mutual

funds is a result of informational spillovers from the international to the domestic funds.

The second research project attempts to address the decision process of mutual fund

families when employing global-domestic side-by-side managers in their firm. Depending

on the results of the first project, either decision, employment or non-employment, might

be questionable. At last, the third research project is about the role of subadvisors in

mutual fund families. More specifically, the intention is to investigate whether mutual

fund families exhibit and take advantage of similar information sharing effects from

hired subadvisors as with international funds.