T. Rowe Price Japan PRJPX

T. Rowe Price announced that lead manager Archibald Ciganer will be stepping down from T. Rowe Price Japan, effective 1 July 2024. He will be replaced by Hiroshi Watanabe. Following this announcement, we are placing the Morningstar Medalist Ratings for T. Rowe Price Japan under review. The strategy previously carried an Above Average rating for the People and Process Pillars. Ciganer served as lead manager on this strategy since December 2013. This was his first stint as a manager, but he gained a considerable amount of experience after taking the helm here. Although there are still more-experienced managers in this space, we have always considered Ciganer to be a talented manager, hence his nomination for the Rising Talent Award in 2020. During his time as a Japan equity analyst at T. Rowe Price, he was trained to become a portfolio manager. Ciganer's track record on the strategy has been uneven. After a middling first year at the helm, Ciganer built a very decent longer-term track record. However, it has lost much of its luster following strong underperformance in recent years. During this period of underperformance, which started in 2021, he has made several changes to key characteristics of the portfolio, including its style and size exposures and sector allocations. This leaves us with the impression that he became more reactive to top-down macro events, which draws attention to the consistency in his execution of the process. On July 1, 2024, Ciganer will hand over responsibility for this strategy to Watanabe. Watanabe has 17 years of investment experience. He joined the firm in 2006 as an analyst covering Japanese mid- and small-cap stocks but became the portfolio manager of the Japanese equity sleeve within the T. Rowe Price International Small-Cap Equity strategy in January 2013. He will continue to manage the Japanese equity sleeve of the T. Rowe Price International Small-Cap Equity strategy, but over time will relinquish his research coverage responsibilities, which will be transitioned to other members of the Japanese equity research team.