On 5 September 2022, abrdn announced that Harry Nimmo will retire from the firm and the industry at the end of 2022 after 37 years with the firm.
In the future, Abby Glennie will remain manager on the UK Smaller Companies strategy. She will be joined by Amanda Yeaman who will be promoted to deputy with effect from 1 January 2023. Glennie has been working with Nimmo on the UK Smaller Companies funds for almost seven years, and as part of succession planning, was named comanager in November 2020.
From a broader team perspective, there will be no change to the overall leadership structure with Andrew Paisley continuing to lead the Smaller Companies team supported by Abby Glennie as his deputy.
There are no plans to change the investment objective, nor the Quality Growth Momentum approach, successfully honed and executed by Nimmo. The structure provided by the process’ quant tool, as well as a clear focus on the particular types of companies the team likes to own, should promote ongoing stability on this front.
Nimmo is leaving an impressive track record behind. Since its launch in January 1997 through to 31 August 2022, the open-ended fund returned 12.5% annualised, compared with the FTSE Small Cap Index’s return of 6.1% and the Morningstar UK Small-Cap Equity category average of 8.9%.
Given Nimmo’s pivotal role here, we have placed the fund Under Review. Our updated view on the strategy will be published in due course.