February 2013 – Ben Russon, manager of the £422.4m Newton UK Opportunities fund, leaves the company for Franklin Templeton. Paul Stephany takes over his role at Newton as Mr Russon will join his new company in April as co-manager on the Franklin UK Select Growth fund, with the intention of becoming lead manager following a period of transition, and as co-manager on the Franklin UK Managers Focus fund.
March 2013 - Richard Buxton quits Schroders to take up the head of UK equities role at Old Mutual Global Investors. Erol Francis also resigned from Schroders on the same day to move to Old Mutual Global Investors.
THE COMPANIES INVOLVED IN OVERHAULS
Scottish Widows Investment Partnership
The past year has seen Edinburgh fund giant Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (Swip) revamp both its investment offering and its equity team. In April it announced the equity offerings would have more focus on global and specialist active equities and quantitative equities, while the real estate, fixed income and multi-asset investment divisions would also be fundamental to growth in the future.
As part of the revamp the company acknowledged it would lose 23 roles, mainly through natural turnover, although while it has announced a number of people leaving it has also hired in talent to boost its property and fixed income offerings.
In January, before the refocusing of its strategy, Swip announced the appointment of Geoff Hepburn from Hartwell as investment manager in the 50-strong real estate team, along with six internal promotions in the division for both international and UK real estate.
The equity overhaul in April resulted in Andrew November, then director of equities at Swip, naming a senior team with Will Low remaining as head of global equities now encompassing UK small cap, real estate securities and absolute return, while Sean Phayre continues as head of the quantitative investments team. However under the new structure the role of head of UK equities was removed causing the departure of Peter Cockburn from the firm.
Almost four months later Mr Low took over the role of director of equities from Mr November, who has taken up the newly created position of investment propositions director that focuses on developing the Swip proposition for Lloyds Banking Group’s customers.
A spokesperson for Swip adds: “In April we announced our intention to reposition our £54bn equities business. As you can imagine this involved the transition of a number of equity funds to the new strategy and subsequently fund manager changes.”
