In a thinly-veiled dig at his former employer Latham said: "We can see a huge opportunity in growing client demand for sustainably-orientated investment products. This has in part been created by several larger institutional fund managers reducing resources in this area just at the moment when these investment themes are becoming increasingly important in driving returns."
WHEB Group announced today that Latham, along with Seb Beloe, Tim Dieppe and Hyewon Kong had been appointed to its asset management team led by Claire Brook, who also used to be head of SRI at Henderson and who is a founding partner of WHEB.
The team will focus on the firm’s core global growth strategy – the IM WHEB Sustainability Fund – a long-only multi-themed equities fund focused on investing in companies providing solutions to sustainability challenges.
Latham’s surprise departure, and that of the rest of his team, was announced by Henderson at the end of last year.
While at Henderson, the team led the market for sustainable and responsible investing and their Industries of the Future Fund, which was managed by Tim Dieppe between 2005 and 2011 returned 13.4% in the five years to December 2011, against a median performance of 7.3% from its peers in the global growth sector.
Latham said: "There is a very close fit between the investment themes in the IM WHEB Sustainability Fund and the themes we pursued under the Industries of the Future strategy at Henderson."
The new recruits bring the total resources in WHEB Group’s asset management team to nine.
"We believe the arrival of the principal members of the ex-Henderson SRI team is transformational for the development of WHEB Asset Management," said Claire Brook, "This team is highly regarded within the fund management industry and we are delighted to welcome them."
