But, over the past decade, following his return to the Newton fold in 2005, his reputation, like the global income fund he was brought in to set up, has grown significantly.
As a result, the news of his leaving for a berth at Troy Asset Management will likely be a blow to the firm, especially following so soon after the departure of Jason Pidcock, who helped launch the firm’s Asian Income proposition, also in 2005. A departure that has seen investors pull significant amounts of money out of the fund. In the past year, the Newton Asian Income fund has seen outflows of roughly £2.1bn according to FE Analytics data.
Which begs the question, is there anything to read into the departures more broadly? And, should more outflows be expected?
According to Mark Dampier, head of research at Hargreaves Lansdown, losing Harries so soon after Pidcock doesn’t bode very well. “It doesn’t seem like Newton is a very happy ship at the moment,” he said.
Newton CEO, Helena Morrissey disagreed strongly that there is anything to be read into the two departures, however, telling Portfolio Adviser: “Jason Pidcock and James Harries left for different career reasons. Newton had previously had a period of low portfolio manager turnover by industry standards, so these recent departures are unusual. Notwithstanding the departures, the average tenure of Newton’s research analysts and fund managers is ten years and their senior investment management team has served an average of 18 years at Newton.
Adrian Lowcock, head of investing at AXA Wealth was of the view that while a second high profile departure will no doubt get the speculators excited, he added the succession is very much in hand as Nick Clay, who takes over as lead manager, has been involved in management of the fund since August 2012.
“It is important investors focus on the facts,” he said: “James’ main role was on the long term economic outlook with the fund following Newton’s in-house thematic approach.
