AJ Bell has highlighted Man Group’s Jonathan Golan, Schroder’s Liam Nunn, and Troy Asset Management’s Charlotte Yonge as rising stars in the fund management industry.
Paul Angell, head of investment research at AJ Bell, said the key to a rising star is a blend of intellect, ability to articulate, and confidence from their company, also helped by guidance from more experienced fund managers.
“Genuine rising stars in fund management are a rare breed. Fund buyers typically focus on experience and long-term performance track records, making appointing junior fund managers a risk to asset managers.
“On top of this, asset managers continue to attempt to move beyond the era of star managers, preferring to focus on investment teams and processes, which they hope will bring more resilience to both the management of funds and the stickiness of assets should a fund manager depart,” Angell said.
“That said, the industry remains a people business. Individuals make investment decisions and these same individuals typically communicate said decisions onto fund buyers. Bonds of conviction and trust are therefore unavoidably built between fund buyers and individual fund managers.
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Golan, who Angell marked as “perhaps the stand-out rising star in the industry”, was previously at Schroders before joining Man Group. In September 2021, the Sterling Corporate Bond fund was launched with Golan as manager. According to FE Fundinfo, the fund has returned 26.4% in the last year, putting it top out of near 100 in the sector.
“Jonathan, and his two credit analysts, have a bottom-up approach to credit investing, focusing on smaller bonds which they see as undervalued versus larger equivalents,” Angell said.
“The fund is managed with more credit risk than the market, often using the maximum 20% allowance for high yield bonds. Jonathan also uses derivative overlays to enhance the fund’s prospective returns and to hedge against adverse market movements.”
Schroder’s Nunn also made the list for his co-management of the Schroder Global Recovery fund alongside Nick Kirrage and Simon Adler. He joined the fund as a co-manager in 2020, and in the last three years, the fund has returned 25.99% compared to a sector average of 10.31% according to FE Fundinfo. Since 2020, the fund’s asset have also tripled to over £900m, Angell said.
“Liam is a passionate value investor, thoroughly committed to the Schroder value team’s disciplined accounting-based process where they scour the cheapest 20% of global stocks, looking to avoid value traps,” Angell said.
“Liam is also arguably a beneficiary of Kevin Murphy’s recent departure from the business as, following an internal re-shuffle of fund management responsibilities, Liam is now one of just two co-managers on the fund.”
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Charlotte Yonge, manager of the Trojan Ethical fund, was also put in the spotlight after growing the fund to over £800m since its launch. The fund has returned 8.82% in the past three years, compared to a sector average 4.22%. Yonge has been with Troy since 2013, previously working at Ruffer Investment Management.
“The fund is a defensively managed long only, multi-asset strategy, sitting alongside the more seasoned Trojan fund, with a high degree of emphasis on capital preservation. The manager has a low turnover approach and concentrated equity holdings. Charlotte tends to invest in traditional asset classes such as equities, government bonds and gold, and is reactive to market opportunities with her weightings to these core classes.
“Within equities her preference is for higher quality, cash generative businesses. The fund also has an exclusions approach to ethical investing spanning tobacco, pornography, fossil fuels, alcohol, gambling and high interest lending,” Angell said.
“Despite being invested in major, liquid asset classes, the fund still takes on market risk, and there is therefore no guarantee the fund will protect capital over any period.”
