Godber is to join MAM Funds by the end of the year along with Georgina Hamilton who was an analyst at Matterley and will focus less on long-term capital growth (as he did at Matterley) and more on consistent income.
MAM Funds’ managing director Gervais Williams said the group had a number of ideas for new funds to be run by Godber.
“Clearly we cannot launch all the products at once, we have a number of ideas and we will be moving forward on those fairly quickly,” he said.
Williams said MAM Funds had the advantage of not running too many legacy funds that were designed to work in a credit boom.
With markets in their current state of constant flux driven by policymakers he said a focus on capital was no longer useful, instead investors will be measuring long-term success in terms of how much income they can generate from their savings.
“You might be up 10% to 12% since the start of the year and then you might suddenly be down 12% because of something Angela Merkel says. We do not have a lot of legacy systems with funds driven by capital considerations.”
The Matterley connection
Ian Dighé, who was appointed executive chairman of MAM Funds in February 2011, co-formed Matterley with George Godber and Henry Dixon, it was then acquired by Charley Stanley Group but maintained its brand name.
Matterley now has £160m in AUM (as at end of March 2012), with the Undervalued Assets Fund running £40m of that total.
Over three years the fund is top quartile, returning 39.3% compared to 30.7% from the FTSE All-Share Total Return index. Since launch in August 2008 the fund is also top quartile, with returns of 37.6% versus 24.3% from the benchmark.
Mike Lilwall, director of Charles Stanley, said: “Over the last three years Matterley has grown assets to more than £160m and is a key part of the group going forward. Henry Dixon will continue as Fund Manager of the Matterley Undervalued Assets Fund. Alice Sharp continues as Analyst and Johnnie Smith joins from the Collectives team.
“The Fund has grown steadily under Henry Dixon’s stewardship, attracting assets from both the Group and externally. We have every confidence that this growth will continue and we wish George and Georgina all the very best for their future careers.”
