Manager Changes - October 2006 Credit Suisse Income
Errol Francis, manager of Credit Suisse's Income, Monthly Income and Alpha Income funds, has left to join Schroders.
The Income fund has experienced a number of changes in management over the last few years with the long-term manager, Bill Mott, relinquishing the day-to-day management duties to Leigh Harrison in August 2003. Mott, who had been managing the fund since 1986. moved upstairs at Credit Suisse to become a thematic and strategic adviser, working with the UK equity team to identify changes in major investment themes.
We felt that Harrison, who had been Mott’s deputy for two years prior to Mott’s move, was a suitable replacement and did return some reasonable performance at the start of his tenure, but was unable to maintain Mott’s impressive long-term performance track record, as can be seen from the enclosed review sheet. Over 2003 and 2004, as well as 3-years cumulative, the fund is ranked in the 3rd quartile of its sector.
From the time Harrison took control of the fund on 1st August 2003 to when he left in October 2005, the fund had returned 36.38%, compared the FTSE All Share TR and the IMA UK Equity Income (sector average) that returned 37.21% and 36.40% respectively [Source: Hindsight (c) Reuters Ltd, Gross Total Return, No Charges Applied, GBP£, 01.08.2003 to 21.10.2005].
Towards the end of October 2005 Harrison left Credit Suisse to join Threadneedle and Errol Francis was appointed the lead manager of the fund. Performance of the fund has been disappointing over this period and it has just been announced that Francis will be leaving the fund with immediate effect to join Schroder. Bill Mott, who was due to retire from the industry as a whole at the same time, has postponed his retirement until the end of December until Francis’s replacement has been found. However, Mott will not actually manage the fund, as it will now be managed on a day-to-day basis by the Credit Suisse UK equity team.
We are conscious that Bill Mott was the undoubted star when it came to managing this fund, and believed that Harrison was a suitable replacement. However, since both men have left and with Francis now moving on, leaving the fund managerless for the foreseeable future with no replacement as yet announced, we feel that it would be an opportune time to make a switch away from this fund.
Jupiter Special Situations
Ben Whitmore has joined Jupiter as manager of the £122m Special Situations fund. Whitmore was recruited from Schroders, where he managed the £288m Recovery fund and two investment trusts. He takes on the Special Sits mandate from Paul Sheehan and will also be helping to develop the group's institutional business.
Sheehan will continue to manage the Jupiter Primadona investment trust plus institutional mandates.
Meanwhile, Justin Seager, who ran the Jupiter UK Growth fund for two years during the worst of the bear market, has taken over the group's UK Growth Exempt mandate from Derek Pound. The exempt vehicle is currently restricted to pension funds and charities but Jupiter is considering restructuring the £27m large-cap focused mandate to create a best ideas portfolio.
Seager took over Edward Bonham Carter's UK Growth fund in January 2001 but he struggled during the bear market and the portfolio sat near the bottom of the UK All Companies sector through most of his two-year tenure. He has been running institutional mandates since 2003.
Old Mutual Asset Management
Old Mutual has made manager changes on five funds, including moving Richard Moore's UK Select Large-Cap and UK Select Equity portfolios to its quantitative strategies team.
Meanwhile, the group has also passed its actively managed US Select Equity fund to the quants department, after deciding it is uncommercial to run two strategies in the North America space. This team also runs the North American Equity portfolio, which sits alongside US Select Equity, headed up by Terry Ewing and Ann Hall, in the peer group. Hall and Ewing both joined the group in 2004, from Hendersons and Britannic respectively, with the portfolio launching in April that year.
There is no timetable for a merger between the two funds as yet and any such move would need unitholder approval.
Elsewhere, the group has made changes on four funds to improve performance, including the two UK vehicles headed up by Moore. While the UK Select Large Cap and UK Select Equity funds will move to the quants team, Ashton Bradbury and Luke Kerr will continue to run the mid- and small-cap element of the latter. This brings the number of funds under the quantitative strategies team to eight, with the department also running the European Equity, Global Equity, UK Equity and Worldwide Select Equity offerings.
Meanwhile, Suresh Sadasivan has also replaced Simon Weston on the Asian Select vehicle, while Andrew Tunks takes over International Bond & Convertible from Sofia Skalistiri.
Sadasivan previously ran the group's Equity Income portfolio, before which he was an international economist and Latin American manager.
Investec Asset Management
Ian Frost is moving from BlackRock to Investec Asset Management to become a global fixed income portfolio manager and Frost's arrival boosts Investec's fixed income team to 31 people. He will contribute to the management of assets under management worth $13.4bn (£8bn).
Frost was previously senior fixed income fund manager for seven years at Merrill Lynch Investment Management, recently rebranded as BlackRock following the completion of the merger between the two firms, and prior to this was senior investment manager at Pictet.
Aegon Asset Management
Aegon Asset Management has announced a series of appointments which include the arrival of Gregory Turnbull Schwartz as investment manager, who arrived at the firm on 25th September and is responsible for industrial sectors and high yield debt.
Kevin Telfer is also joining the firm as fixed income product specialist in December, leaving his current role for Aon Consulting as senior investment consultant and actuary to pension schemes.
Standard Life Growth & Income
Edward Legget has replaced Wesley McCoy as manager of Standard Life Investments' Growth & Income fund.
McCoy, who ran the £44m Growth & Income fund from 1 January 2005 until 1 October this year, has handed over the mandate to concentrate on his UK Equity Unconstrained vehicle whic was launched in September 2005 and invests in a concentrated portfolio of around 50 UK stocks across the market spectrum.
Legget has been working within Standard Life's UK equities team for the past four years, concentrating primarily on the engineering, electronics, chemicals and transport sectors. He will continue to work alongside McCoy in Standard Life's 17-man UK equity team, which is headed up by David Cumming.
Barings Emerging Europe
Martin Majdaniuk is to take over running the Baring Emerging Europe investment trust when current manager Stuart Richards joins Resolution Asset Management later this year.
Majdaniuk, who will report to Ghadir Abu Leil-Cooper, is set to join Barings at the end of the year. He will leave his Copenhagen-based post at Nordea Investment Management, where he currently runs European and Russian portfolios for institutional and retail clients amounting to f750m in assets. He has been with Nordea for eight years and also has experience with Nomura Securities as an equity analyst focusing on Eastern Europe.
| 
