Samuel Meakin: Jupiter Fund Management has announced that Andrew Formica will be joining as CEO from March 1 2019. He will replace current CEO Maarten Slendebroek, who will step down on May 1 2019 after a short transition period.
Slendebroek has been at the helm for around five years. He succeeded Edward Bonham-Carter in 2014, and in that time he has helped to diversify the firm’s international distribution and asset class capabilities.
Formica is known to us from his ten years as CEO of Henderson. He subsequently became co-CEO of Janus Henderson following the merger of the two firms, before departing in July 2018.
Jupiter is home to a number of experienced portfolio managers, and manager/analyst turnover has generally remained low.
The structure of the investment teams at Jupiter also bears some similarity to that at Henderson, with individual teams retaining autonomy in terms of following their own investment processes. Formica should therefore have a degree of familiarity with the setup there.
Naturally, we will continue to monitor the situation as it develops in due course, but as things stand, we do not expect any sea change to the strategic direction or to the investment teams.
For now, we maintain our positive view of Jupiter and we’ve made no changes to any Morningstar Analyst Ratings on the group’s funds.