Kames Capital has continued to lose managers as Artemis Investment Management announced it had appointed Jack Holmes as the fifth member of its fixed income team.
Holmes is the fifth manager to be poached from Kames, following Stephen Snowden (pictured) and David Ennett, who defected to Artemis in November last year.
In a press release, Artemis also announced its plans to launch a new Short-Dated Global High Yield Bond Fund which will be managed by Ennett and Stephen Baines.
Kames had already announced Holmes was leaving his role as fixed income investment manager to pursue other opportunities after two and a half years. Prior to his role at Kames, he worked at Standard Life Investments from January 2013 as an analyst in the European high yield team, after starting his career at Cambridge Econometrics.
Graham Bentley noted Holmes’ exit coincides with Kames hiring of a new head of high yield. “It is exactly six months since the original team left, and I notice Holmes will be joining following what appears to be only a month’s notice,” Bentley said.
The same week Holmes’ exit had been announced, Kames revealed it had hired Thomas Hanson and Eleanor Price as high yield experts in an attempt rebuild its fixed income team.
Bentley said Artemis needed to boost their fixed income team in order to broaden their offering and hiring teams is a quick way to build a presence in a market.
“Teams know one another, and they will feel that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. There is evidence that when portfolio teams move, that performance moves with them, to the detriment of the original management group, and further to the benefit of the recipient’s wider team. The new business learns from the hired team.”
‘Second wave’
Ryan Hughes, head of active portfolios at AJ Bell, said it comes as little surprise that additional members of the Kames fixed interest team are joining Snowden and Ennett, as it is “fairly common for a second wave of joiners after a high-profile move”.
“People want to work with people they like and trust and therefore old colleagues coming back together is a common occurrence with fund manager moves,” Hughes said.
The fact Kames were able to recruit experienced investors from rivals to run their products shows that the firm remains an attractive place to work, he said. “Kames have been looking to get back on the front foot and I’ll be taking a look at their re-shaped capability in the near future.”
Hughes pointed out it was not the first time Artemis had poached a whole team.
“Artemis have done this before when they poached almost the entire US equity team from Threadneedle and that has turned out to be very successful with strong performance and asset raising taking place over the years since they joined,” Hughes said. Cormac Weldon quit Threadneedle with the majority of his US equity team in 2014 and now runs over £3bn worth of funds.
