In taking over the stewardship of the £316m Jupiter Global Managed Fund from Simon Somerville and John Chatfeild-Roberts, Stephen Mitchell has presumably been given free rein to mould the portfolio to his liking.
While a manager-of-managers structure sounds good in principle, it rarely gains much traction with investors concerned by the “too many cooks…” syndrome. In slashing the fund’s size and focusing more on dividend growth, Mitchell is presumably aiming to take on a more single-minded approach.
“We’ve always seen this fund very much as a second-string offering for Simon Somerville who is very much as an out-and-out Japanese fund manager,” says Gavin Haynes, investment director at Whitechurch Securities.
“We always thought it was a bit strange that he was managing a global mandate as a part-time job.”
Certainly, global equity should not be seen as a “part-time” concern for a fund group of Jupiter’s calibre, and with a target to bring the 272-stock portfolio down to around 45 stocks Mitchell could soon be fronting a much more concentrated and probably punchier portfolio.
“The fund currently has around 44% in North America, and what is considered small cap in the US is more large cap in UK terms, so I shouldn’t be too concerned that cutting stocks will be a problem for him,” says Tony Yousefian of Albemarle Street Partners.
“For me there are currently smaller funds with better prospects currently in the global sector that we would prefer to use, such as Artemis Global Growth which is a similar £312m in size but is not as diluted as the Jupiter fund’s current positioning with 157 stocks.
“Jupiter wouldn’t necessarily be the first investment house I would turn to for a global mandate.”
When head of strategy Mitchell joined Jupiter in November it said his primary role would be to “bring together” its global equity capability and “broaden and strengthen” its product range. The first steps have been taken…
