James Inglis-Jones will become sole head of the team, which runs the Liontrust Income, European Growth, Pan-European, European Absolute Return and European Absolute Alpha funds. He will be supported by Samantha Gleave, who joined Liontrust a year ago. The group said there would be no change in the investment processes as a result of the changes.
West joined the group in 2006 from Polar Capital to develop and manage the Liontrust Cashflow Solution investment process, which focuses on how much cash a company generates on its investments and how investors value a company’s cash flow. It has been very successful on the Income Fund, which is top decile over one and three years, but the European funds have struggled in the shorter term. The European Growth and European Absolute Return funds are fourth quartile over one year, though longer term returns are ahead of both the peer group and the benchmark.
Succession plan
John Ions, chief executive of Liontrust, said: “West and I spoke 18 months ago about his desire to retire within the next three years. We appointed Samantha as part of the succession plan and the speed at which she has integrated into the team and the company has enabled us to bring forward his retirement." Gleave worked with West and Inglis-Jones at Fleming Investment Management earlier in her career and was previously a senior equity analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Advisers were untroubled by the news of West’s retirement. Darius McDermott, managing director of Chelsea Financial Services, said: "His retirement shouldn’t affect the funds. The new co-manager – Gleave – has been there for a year or so now and has settled in.
“West joined at the same time as Inglis-Jones (from Polar) and they both developed the cashflow solutions process. As Inglis-Jones is still there I see no reason why this process or way of managing funds should change. The only question mark I suppose is if he could do with a bit more resource as he is heading the team on his own now as well as looking after the process."
Hargreaves Lansdown also said it did not envisage any significant changes to these funds given Inglis-Jones remains co-manager, and the same investment approach is being applied.