Tweedy, Browne Company and MFS Investment Management, which previously ran 5% and 3% of the £2bn mandate, have been removed from the list of underlying investment managers as Witan hands a greater mandate to Lansdowne Partners (UK), Pzena Investment Management and Veritas Asset Management.
In a statement to the stock exchange this morning, Witan said following a review of its global equity managers, Lansdowne, Pzena and Veritas would now look after roughly 14.3% of the assets under management (AUM).
Witan will now employ nine external active fund managers covering UK, European, Asian, emerging market and global remits, with 10% held in specialist vehicles.
Andrew Bell, CEO at Witan, said: “The reason for the changes is to increase the performance potential of the overall combined portfolio.
“Although manager risk diversification is one of the benefits of the multi-manager approach, there is a balance to be struck between the resulting reduction in performance volatility and having a structure with the potential to deliver attractive levels of outperformance, which requires the portfolio to differ significantly from the index.”
Witan’s net asset value per share is currently 998.23p, versus a share price of 976p.
Bell added: “Witan continues to seek to increase the active content within its combined portfolio, to improve the potential to deliver good capital returns and build on our record of 42 consecutive years of dividend growth.”
