Henderson, 63, has run the flagship Natural Resources Fund since 1992 and will fall just short of his 20th anniversary as the fund’s manager, standing down at the end of January 2012. He will remain as an adviser to the natural resources team, continuing to expound his belief to Gregson and the rest of the team in the commodities super-cycle, something he first talked about a decade ago and still strongly believes in.
When asked about who he thought should succeed him Henderson’s first thought was Neil Gregson, describing him as his “natural successor” who at the time was head of emerging markets and related sector funds at Credit Suisse Asset Management. After two decades with CSAM he was recruited to JP Morgan Asset Management in September 2010 to run the Global Mining Fund from launch, working alongside Henderson and his team.
Gregson is a mining engineer and prior to Credit Suisse he worked for a number of resource and mining firms. He will take over the day-to-day management of the funds from 1 February, 2012, and will continue to tun the Global Mining Fund.
The two share a belief in the commodities super-cycle as well as a preference for small and mid-cap investing. Part of Henderson’s role will be to help with the identification and research of these small-cap names, aiming to identify the right companies early on to maximise longer-term returns for the fund and its investors.
