The pair will report to North CEO John Husselbee, and work with Nick Stanhope across the firm’s £450m multi-manager range.
Roberts joined Gartmore on 1 July last year, having previously been head of fund research at Williams de Bröe. Towli had been at Gartmore for the past nine years.
“These are extremely exciting times in our industry. We are seeing ‘once in a generation changes’ to regulation, whilst these changes bring challenges they also create fantastic opportunities for our business,” says Husselbee.
“The outsourcing of investment management is a growth business, and with RDR that will continue to be so. We’ve established ourselves over the past five or six years as a credible and competitive multi-manager, and we feel now is the right time to build on that”.
Positioning
Husselbee says the North multi-manager portfolios have been reducing their exposure to commodities, in part due to a fear of a further slowdown in emerging markets. He also has some concerns over oil price elevation.
“Oil prices are a bit of a double edged sword. Oil inflation means a recovery is underway but it can of course reach a point where prices become too high”.
Prices have continued to increase following Opec’s decision not to raise output yesterday, the cost of a barrel of Brent crude rising to $118. Capital Economics, however, suggests that Opec’s decision to hold firm may not last, despite any review of the decision not expected to take place until the next quarter.
"We suspect that if prices pick up any further, those members that did want to increase quotas today, led by Saudi Arabia, will simply increase supply anyway. Indeed, even those members who voted against may be tempted to take advantage of higher prices and allow their compliance to slip further too," Capital said.
