JOHCM hires ex-Thames River managers
JO Hambro Capital Management has hired Trygve Toraasen and Carlos Moreno who left Thames River Capital following its merger with F&C Asset Management. The duo will be in charge of JOHCM’s All Europe Dynamic Growth fund which is due to be launched in February 2011. The pair has previously worked together; before joining Thames River, Toraasen and Moreno co-managed the Fidelity European Dynamic Growth fund for around five years.
Henderson plans fund mergers
Henderson Global Investors is proposing a number of fund mergers – subject to shareholder approval- in order to rationalise its product range. Within its UK equity range, Henderson is proposing to merge the £93m UK Opportunities fund into their £327m UK Alpha fund; both funds are managed by Stephen Peak and he would be in charge of the combined offering. Their £209m European Opportunities would be merged into the £755m European Growth fund; the plans is for the managers of the Henderson European Growth fund – Richard Pease and Simon Rowe – to run the combined fund while the current manager of Henderson European Opportunities, Paul Casson, would take on another role at the firm. Henderson is also proposing to merge the £34m Cautious Portfolio – run by Craig Heron – into their Multi-Manager Income and Growth fund, which is managed by Bill McQuaker. Another proposal is to merge the institutional share classes of the Henderson UK Equity fund and the Henderson High Alpha UK Equity fund.
Schroders launches frontier markets fund
Schroder has launched their Luxembourg-domiciled Schroder ISF Frontier Markets Equity fund which will be benchmarked against the MSCI Frontier Markets Index. The fund is co-managed by the head of the emerging markets team, Alan Conway, and Rami Sidani who leads Schroder’s Middle East and North Africa team and is based in Dubai; the duo also co-manage the Schroder ISF Middle East fund. The newly-launched fund will be managed using the same process as Schroder’s other emerging markets offerings. The emerging markets team determines country weights using a top-down quant model which takes in factors such as valuations, growth, currency risk, momentum and interest rates. The country allocations are then populated with analyst stock recommendations and another quant model provides a sense-check on sector exposure.
JPMorgan proposes a cut in active management fees
JPMorgan Asset Management will cut the fees on its £61m JPM UK Active 350 fund, following the outcome of an emergency general meeting to be held on January 28 2011. The mandate is unchanged but the firm proposes to introduce a new low-cost share class and rename the fund JPM UK Active Index Plus. The fund is currently managed by Michael Barakos and Christopher Llewelyn and the charge for the retail share class will be reduced from 1.18% to a capped annual fee of 0.55%. The cost structure consists of an annual basic charge of 0.4% and a 10% performance fee which stops accruing if the fund beats the FTSE All Share index by more than 1.5 percentage points in any given accounting period.
