David Williams will manage the M&G fund, with Michael Stiasny as his deputy, who has been in charge of the Prudential Global Growth Trust since December last year. Williams is already deputy manager of the M&G Recovery Fund.
The investment approach of the M&G International Specialist Equity Fund will be the same although one big difference between the two propositions is that with the Prudential offering Williams was constrained to having at least 50% invested in the UK. Going forwards he will be unconstrained, with his performance benchmarked against the MSCI World index and hence will invest with a more global remit. The change takes effect in February.
This move is part of a larger rationalisation programme by M&G, started in 2010, that will see Prudential’s unit trust range gradually integrated into that of M&G. In principle, the annual management charges will be either the same as or lower than those AMC on the merging Prudential funds. Specifically, the M&G International Specialist Equity fund will have an AMC of 1.5% and initial charge of 4%.
Subject to unitholder approval, the Prudential Growth Trust will merge into Graham French’s M&G Managed Growth Fund; the Prudential Small Companies Trust is to merge into Louise Nash’s M&G Smaller Companies fund; the Prudential UK Index Tracker Trust will merge into the M&G Index Tracker Fund.
Meanwhile, M&G has named Colm D’Olier as deputy fund manager on its £548m Global Emerging Markets and £419m Asian funds. The two funds will continue to be co-managed by Michael Godfrey and Matthew Vaight.
The firm described this as a “natural progression” as D’Olier has been working closely with the two of them since joining as an analyst in the global equities team in 2007.
