Axa Investment Managers UK equity manager Chris St John has quietly been building out his UK equities team ahead of the departure of Nigel Thomas, who had a high profile with intermediaries.
The appointment of Simon Young as deputy manager on the Axa World Framlington fund on 1 November finalises changes to the team ahead of Thomas’s retirement, which was announced in April last year and is due to take place in March 2019. John King has already been appointed secondary manager on the UK Select Opportunities fund.
Young joined from Blackrock in September 2018 as lead manager on the UK Blue Chip Equity Income fund. Jamie Forbes-Wilson, who used to run the fund, will now concentrate on the management of the team’s four funds, St John told Portfolio Adviser.
King, who joined Axa IM in 2016 as assistant portfolio manager, will also be promoted from support manager to lead manager on a segregated mandate when Thomas steps down to become a trustee.
St John said the pair have a similar working relationship to that he has had with Thomas. “Essentially it’s an extra pair of eyes and ears more than anything. Being engaged on the fund just means that there is constant dialogue about the stocks, strategy – just as there is with Nigel and I. But the decisions on the fund will be made by me.”
St John said the team has a collegial approach. “It’s quite important to be able to mix and match and cross and support fund managers because culturally we’re very good at sharing information. I just want to make sure that carries on in the funds.”
Team needs to build profile with intermediaries
Ryan Hughes, head of active portfolios at AJ Bell, said: “Replacing the experience and expertise of Nigel Thomas was always going to be a challenge, particularly with how well known he was to advisers.
“Chris St John has built a solid profile over a numbers of years and the announcement that John King has become the deputy on the fund finalises the changes following Nigel’s retirement. King remains relatively unknown in the wealth manager space and I’m sure Axa will want to introduce him to the market to help build confidence in the fund.”
Hughes described Young as a very experienced UK equities manager. “Axa I’m sure would be the first to admit that the UK Blue Chip Equity Income fund is sub-scale at £75m and therefore this is good opportunity for Young to improve the long term performance of the fund and increase the assets in the strategy.”
“Given his experience, it seems sensible to formally put him on the offshore fund to support Chris St John given the recent departure of Nigel Thomas.”
Young, who was director of UK equities at Blackrock, began his career at the US asset manager in 1997. He was also senior fund manager at Aviva and a co-founder of Heartwood Partners.
Chelsea Financial Services managing director Darius McDermott said the team had lost one of the best UK managers with Thomas’s retirement, but that they had done well with succession planning. King’s promotion on the segregated mandate as well as the UK Select Opportunites fund was a vote of confidence, McDermott said.
