Investment directors David Millar and David Jubb, along with global investment strategist Richard Batty, are all currently on gardening leave with the date they are joining Invesco still to be confirmed.
They will be charged with building a multi-asset strategy form their base in Henley, building on the Atlanta-based global multi-asset capability it already has.
The fact that Invesco Perpetual was working on a multi-asset business was first revealed in Portfolio Adviser back in April.
At Standard Life Investment, Euan Munro continues as head of multi-asset investing and the resulting restructure will see Ian Pizer transfer from the government bond team. Reporting to head of multi-asset fund management Guy Stern, he will retain responsibility for the Absolute Return Global Bond Strategies (ARGBS) as well as generating ideas for the GARS portfolio.
Roger Sadewsky, co-manager of the ARGBS portfolio will continue his existing responsibilities but in addition will also make a more formalised contribution on credit strategies to the multi-asset team.
Neil Richardson will assume responsibility for overseeing the equity strategies within the absolute return portfolios.
BestInvest is one firm that thinks the move will have little impact on the way the GARS Fund, in particular, is run, saying: “The portfolio manager and main architect of the fund is Euan Munro who together with three team leaders are the senior trigger pullers on this fund.
"The multi-asset team comprises a total of 23 people and is divided into three teams: Andrew Milligan runs the team of five economists in the strategy research team; Brian Fleming heads the risk team of four; Guy Stern runs the team of 14 that comprise the implementation team. The rigid investment process starts with the economists’ team who generate ideas, which are then checked by the risk team before being actioned by the implementation team.
"We do not believe that the three departing members will have a deleterious effect on this fund’s future performance so we will not be amending our top five-star rating on this fund.”
Separately, Lance Phillips, investment director, global equities, will also be leaving the company. This announcement follows the news that Wesley McCoy is to rejoin Standard Life Investments as an investment director in the global equity team on 1 October.
Steve Weeple will take on responsibility for Phillips’ global equity portfolios.
