We have high regard for Mark Barnett and his ability as an equity income manager. He’s had some challenges since taking over as manager of Invesco Perpetual High Income, but he’s rebuilt the team, added resources to cover large caps and unquoted companies, and delegated a number of responsibilities to senior team members.
We’ve also seen Barnett’s ability to reshape the portfolio to bring it more in line with how he has run portfolios in the past. While his overall investment approach is largely similar to previous managers, his own style is coming through in the portfolio construction. Barnett prefers less stock concentration at the top end of the portfolio with reduced allocation to the top 10 names and at the bottom end he favours a smaller allocation to unquoted names.
While we remain concerned about Barnett’s workload given the number of funds he is responsible for, we are seeing evidence of his ability to cope with the considerable increase in assets, warranting the fund’s move to a positive rating in July.