As an investment management director he will be combining the management of client money, developing new client relationships, client service and research. He will report to Richard Spencer, chief investment officer at Brooks Macdonald Asset Management, and will have particular responsibility in the firm’s UK equity team.
Thompson brings more than 20 years’ experience with him having been at New Star between 2002 and its acquisition by Henderson in April 2009. Prior to this he was with Newton, before which he was at Eagle Star Investment Managers.
Since New Star closed, in 2009, he has been studying for his PCIAM (Private Client Investment Advice and Management) exam though he has not been actively working in fund management.
In his last year or so at New Star he was heavily criticised when, as manager of the New Star Higher Income Fund, he stubbornly held on to bank stocks in the summer of 2008 as Barclays and HBoS fell by 60% and 75% in a year. The £500m fund went down by 38% in 12 months and at one point it was the worst performer of the 98 UK equity income funds in that 12-month period.
In April 2009, New Star was taken over by Henderson Global Investors, at which point Thompson was not taken on but his fund, which at the end of June 2009 held £144m in assets under management, was.
Thompson’s Higher Income Fund was merged with the £122m New Star Equity Income Trust run by Charles Deptford – another not taken on by Henderson – on 28 August the same year to form the Henderson Higher Income Fund run by Graham Kitchen and Andrew Jones.
Just to complete the mongrel that is the Henderson Higher Income Fund it also contains the assets of Kitchen and Jones’ £465m Henderson UK Growth & Income Fund, as of June 2010, and Dan Roberts’ Gartmore UK Equity Income Fund from 12 August this year.
It currently has £576m in assets under management.
