“Given this is a long term, fairly cautious fund and Nick Clay is taking over the reins I expect little will change in the short term,” he added.
“However, given the fund’s large size, there is the potential to see similar levels of redemptions to when Jason Pidcock stepped down from managing the Newton Asian Income fund.”
Indeed, the team-based, thematic approach is something that Newton is very keen to highlight, and understandably so, as it should mean that in the longer term a departure such as Harries or Pidcock will not have as much of an impact, especially having delivered a decade’s worth of outperformance.
As Chris Mayo, investment director at Wellian Investment Solutions explained, “Newton’s funds are managed with a wider team and so have perhaps not quite the same star manager culture as other firms.
But, he added, a desire to try something with a little more autonomy could be one of the reasons behind Harries’ departure.
If that is the case, the move to a boutique like Troy would make sense as managers there will have decidedly less support and more autonomy than he would have enjoyed at Newton. Equally, similar things could be said of a move to somewhere like Jupiter that prides itself of the differing views of its managers.
The more important point for investors though is not really why Harries left, but whether or not to remain invested in the fund. And, here most are willing to give the team based approach the benefit of the doubt.
Darius McDermott, MD at FundCalibre, said that the departure was a blow as he was the architect of the strategy.
“It may be a team-based approach, but Harries has been with it since launch and, ultimately, would have been responsible for the decisions.
Mayo said that the firm will discuss it, but there would be no knee jerk reaction. “With Clay, the fund is in safe hands,” he said, “so its not an immediate sell.”
For Dampier, while the firm will remove the fund from its Wealth 150+ list until it has met with the new management, he too says that doesn’t mean it won’t be reinstated.
