Cast your mind back a few months, and the list of high-profile fund pickers “spending more time with the family” was lengthy with the likes of Bambos Hambi, Mark Harris, Craig Heron and Keith Speck all out on a limb.
Thankfully, things have since picked up and all of these names at least have resurfaced – Hambi is at Standard Life and Speck has joined RSM Tenon. Just this month, Harris started at Eden Financial while Heron too is employed in a new role in the institutional world.
A team merger
Yesterday’s announcement by Schroders that it has appointed Rob Hall as head of multi-manager may be interpreted as further evidence that things have again picked up in the space, though spare a thought for the previous incumbent in that role, Andrew Yeadon. At the time of his departure in February this year, Schroders’ managing director of UK intermediary Robin Stoakley said there was “no longer a need for a head of multi-manager” at the firm following a merger of its fund of funds capabilities with its Johanna Kyrklund-led multi-asset team.
“Multi-manager was not delivering great performance from an asset allocation perspective and we just felt there was little logic in having two teams sitting next to each other essentially doing very similar things,” he told us at the time.
The logic behind the merger arguably still makes sense today, where cost cutting is a vital concern for asset managers, though the U-turn on personnel is harder to fathom. If we are being cynical, the fact that Hall joined Schroders in a newly-created role as ‘head of manager selection’ around the same time as Yeadon’s departure suggests a different motive.
I do not know where Yeadon is today, nor do I have his take on his exit from Schroders, but I am sure he would agree that it can be hard to sit comfortably in the highly-competitive and surprisingly close-knit world of multi-manager.
Tough times
“I don’t think there are that many jobs going for multi-managers at the moment; it is quite a saturated market and funds aren’t really selling,” says Meera Patel, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
“I was really disappointed when Andrew Yeadon left because we held him in high regard. Whatever the internal reasons may have been, and whatever they [Schroders] told to the market, I don’t really care; but I do think the change is contradictory from what was said when Yeadon left.”
Under Yeadon’s tenure in the five years to the end of 2010, only the Schroders Cautious Managed portfolio had consistently outperformed its IMA sector peer group, though both the High Alpha and Strategic Balanced funds also delivered positive returns.
I wish Harris and Heron and Hall the best of luck in their new roles, because if they don’t deliver, there will always be someone else willing to takeover.
