A former fund manager at Neil Woodford’s investment boutique has landed at Schroders to help on the investment trust mandate it snagged from his former employer.
Paul Lamacraft, who had worked as a fund manager and investment director for Woodford Investment Management since launch, joined Schroders in January as an investment manager, according to his Linkedin profile.
Portfolio Adviser understands Lamacraft has specifically been brought on board to help with the integration of the Woodford Patient Capital mandate which Schroders took over following the collapse of Woodford’s investment business last year.
In his bio he describes himself as “an early stage and growth investor and business builder with a focus on technology enabled companies”.
The trust, which has rebranded to the Schroder UK Public Private trust, currently has £476.8m in assets under management. It is trading at a 51.9% discount, according to the Association of Investment Companies.
It is led by Schroders head of European private equity Tim Creed and head of data insights and research innovation Ben Wicks with Schroders head of sustainable research Andrew Howard, healthcare specialist Erwin Boos and Schroders Adveq, the asset manager’s private equity team also assisting on the mandate.
At the time Schroders was awarded the mandate analysts claimed the fund group was at a disadvantage being unfamiliar with the unquoted names that now largely comprise the trust.
As at the end of January the trust’s top-10 holdings were still dominated by unquoteds purchased under Woodford’s management, with Atom Bank, Oxford Nanopore and Benevolent AI making up 30% of the trust’s net assets, according to Trustnet. Rutherford Health, which listed on the Nex exchange for smaller companies last February, was 15.6% of the portfolio.
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Lamacraft and his twin brother, Stephen, were among the three fund managers supporting Woodford’s investment team. The brothers followed Woodford from Invesco Perpetual where they had worked alongside him in the UK equities team.
Lamacraft started his career at Ernst and Young in 1999 where he became a senior accountant. After that he specialised in M&A transactions, working in senior positions for Deutsche Bank and Baker Tilly.
