As revealed last week, the former chief executive of the Investment Association today announced his five managers involved in the trust as individuals from First State Investments, Artemis, Jo Hambro Capital, Comgest and Lansdowne Partners.
The investment adviser is Willis Towers Watson and Big Issue Invest as supporting investment manager.
Orbis Investments, which had been listed on the trust’s website as one of the investment managers attached to the mandate, was conspicuously absent from the final group.
A spokesperson for Orbis confirmed that the group had been in initial discussions with Godfrey but had backed out for “a number of different reasons.”
Godfrey said Orbis’ decision was a matter of incompatible business models.
“We’ve become increasingly firm in our view to have bespoke portfolios,” he said.
“The structure of their fund is not quite what we wanted to have in our portfolio and they did not want to run a bespoke portfolio for what, at the outset, would be a relatively small client.
“We discussed it with them, and they simply said that is not the way we do business.”
Among the new managers forming the line-up is Artemis Investment Management duo Mark Niznik and William Tamworth, co-managers of the Artemis UK Smaller Companies fund.
The pair will be managing and designing a concentrated, bespoke UK smaller companies portfolio with up to 30 stocks.
Niznik said he and Tamworth were “delighted” to join The People’s Trust, and “passionately believe” in the long-termism approach, espoused by Godfrey.
“Over the long-term UK smaller companies have consistently outperformed larger companies, something that is well known but under-exploited,” he said.
“By being part of this ground-breaking seven-year mandate, investors in The People’s Trust are well placed to benefit from this trait”.
Jo Hambro Capital Management’s Ben Leyland and Robert Lancastle have also signed on to run a portfolio of 25 to 40 global stocks and have the ability to ramp up cash exposure by as much as 50%, in order to protect shareholder value.
