The acquisition is a move by Liontrust to strengthen its UK equity offering and follows the takeover of Asia- and Emerging Markets-focused Occam in October last year.
In total four retail funds and two segregated mandates will transfer to Liontrust, lose their WCAM name and take on Liontrust branding.
The retail funds are the Walker Crips UK Growth Fund, Equity Income Fund, UK High Alpha Fund and UK Fund, which have £441m in AUM and will continue to be managed by Bailey and Luthman.
Liontrust said the deal would cause little, if any, disruption to investors, the acquired funds and Liontrust’s existing UK equity funds operating side by side in order to "preserve the different investment processes and styles which characterise each of them."
Bailey joined Walker Crips Group in 1987 and is currently investment director of the whole group and managing director of WCAM.
Meanwhile, Luthman started at WCAM in 2000 and together with Bailey has co-managed funds and developed the Walker Crips Group asset managment business.
Broader offering
John Ions, chief executive at Liontrust, said: "The addition of Stephen Bailey and Jan Luthman is testament to the fact we invest in fund managers with robust and repeatable investment processes that add value to client portfolios over the long term and that the success of Liontrust over the past couple of years enables us to attract the best talent."
Bailey and Luthman use a thematic macro investment process that looks at economic, political and social developments affecting the UK and the rest of the world to make investment decisions, rather than stock-specific analysis.
Liontrust’s existing UK Growth Fund is managed using the firm’s economic advantage investment process, which means the fund only invests in UK companies with distinctive, intangible strengths that competitors struggle to reproduce.
The Liontrust Income Fund uses a cashflow solution process and only buys high-yielding stocks with unusually strong cash flows where investors have low profit expectations.
Ions continued: "The macro investment process and style of Stephen Bailey and Jan Luthman is complementary to our economic advantage and cashflow solution teams. We are confident, therefore, that we will be able to use our sales and marketing capability and rising profile to capitalise on the performance to grow assets under management in the funds managed by Stephen and Jan."
At completion, the management responsibilities of three of WCAM’s current funds – the Corporate Bond, Select Income and Global Growth funds – will be delegated to another company in the Walker Crips Group. The main reason for this is the high number of Walker Crips Group clients invested in these funds.
Following the deal Liontrust will have more than £2bn in AUM, with £604m brought over by WCAM.
