Premier Miton has gone shopping, and come home with UK equity boutique Tellworth.
Our readers will remember that Tellworth was founded by Paul Marriage and John Warren after they left Schroders in 2017 and it has since accumulated about £560mn in assets under management.
So what is Premier Miton getting? Well about a quarter of Tellworth's assets sit in the Tellworth UK Smaller Companies fund which is managed by Marriage and Warren, both of whom are joining Premier Miton as part of the deal.
This fund is one of the top performers in the IA UK Smaller Companies sector. It is also the most popular fund of that type in our database - a distinction it shares with Chelverton UK Equity Growth.
Tellworth runs four funds and the only other one to appear in our database is Tellworth UK Select, an absolute return fund which is held by just one allocator. It is also the only other Tellworth fund to have assets over £100mn.
Certainly Premier Miton has a large offering in the UK equity space and the addition of Tellworth's UK smaller companies team plugs a gap - Premier Miton's existing UK Smaller Companies fund is only £60mn in size and isn't held by a single allocator we cover.
We wouldn't be shocked if the acquisition enabled Gervais Williams to focus on his much larger UK Multi-Cap Income fund which has a small but not insignificant following in our database. With three DFMs holding it, with a concerted push it could certainly rank among the most popular UK equity income funds (though its performance would need to improve).
Speaking of UK equity income funds, the other thing Premier Miton is getting through this acquisition is Mark Barnett, who joined Tellworth in 2021 and who runs the Tellworth UK Income & Growth fund which was set up about 18 months ago.
Given its short lifespan to date, it unsurprisingly isn't held by any of the allocators we cover but Barnett will also be joining Premier Miton.
As far as our database is concerned, UK equities is not an area of particular strength for Premier Miton despite the number of funds it has in this area - by way of contrast, it runs some of the most popular funds in US and European equities - and this move could be seen as a way of fixing that.
But how Premier Miton handles having two high profile UK equity income managers on its roster will be something to keep an eye on.
