M&G, the investment arm of the Prudential insurance group, has walked away with top prize at the inaugural Lipper fund awards. M&G, which launched the UK's first unit trust n 1931, won the "best fund group overall" award while Jupiter, Neptune and Standard Life Investments each won two of the ten other group trophies presented to fund companies returning strong performance in a particular asset group. Jupiter, which may be floated soon by its parent Commerzbank, won gongs for "best mixed assets fund group" and "best non uk equity fund group". Boutique Neptune Investment Management secured a prize for "best equity fund small group" and "best non UK equity small fund group". Neptune founder Robin Geffen boasted the top two peforming funds out of more than 2,000 "open-ended" funds in the market during 2006. Neptune's Russia and Greater Russia was up 52.1 per cent last year, just ahead of second placed Neptune China's gain of 50.3 per cent. Standard Life Investment, another fund unit of an insurance group, won "best equity fund large group" award and "best UK equity fund small group" award. Trophies were also presented to 35 funds that topped their respective Lipper classification; additional fund winners in the smaller classifications (by overall assets under management) receive certificates. Fidelity won twelve individual awards in total, with New Star winning seven and AXA Framlington, JP Morgan and Schroders each winning five. Aureliano Gentilini, Lipper's Head of Research, Europe said: "All our winners deserve to be congratulated for achieving what could be argued is the ultimate in investment performance - delivering consistently strong risk-adjusted performance, and relative to their peers. " In calculating the awards, Lipper considered funds registered for sale in the UK, classifying both offshore and domestic funds together. Awards were given to funds with a 3, 5 and 10 year history as at the end of the evaluation year to equity, bond and mixed-asset classes with at least ten portfolios.