Brexit rules and the impact of covid mean Ian Heslop, the long-serving lead fund manager on the Jupiter Merian Global Equity Absolute Return fund, is stepping back from day-to-day fund management and into an advisory role.
Heslop has for some time been based in Austria, Covid made it difficult to manage his team at Jupiter, and the funds, remotely.
In addition, as a result of Brexit, he cannot be an FCA authorised fund manager while living in Austria so has decided to move away from managing the team and the money.
He had been co-head of the systematic equity team at the company.
Instead he will take on a new role, looking at ways to improve the models used to make the investment decisions, and liaising with some key clients.
Speaking to FTAdviser he said: “Apart from not being co-head of the team day to day, and not being a named fund manager, it is business as usual. Amadeo Alentorn, who has worked with me as co-head for years, and the four other fund managers on the team will take over. Obviously I am an FCA-regulated person, but with Brexit I cannot manage money as an FCA regulated person from Austria. It is a personal decision of mine”
Heslop also managed the same company's £500m US Equity fund, and other mandates at Jupiter. Heslop originally managed those funds at Old Mutual Global Investors and was involved in the management buyout which created Merian Global Investors, which was later sold to Jupiter Asset Management.
Heslop was known to use the momentum style of investing, which relied substantially on algorithms.
Performance has been weaker in recent years so the funds have shrunk in size, but 2021 was a better year with the fund returning 18 per cent, compared with 3 per cent for the average fund in the IA Global sector. But that performance had been preceded by three consecutive years of negative returns.
A representative of Jupiter said: "The new structure of the team will ensure continuity for existing clients and we are confident that this strategy will continue to build upon its strong foundations.
"We are pleased that performance has improved, and the team has felt a positive impact from wider resources available at Jupiter since joining last year. A clear example of this are the enhancements made to the process through working closely with the dedicated data science team. We would like to wish Ian and Amadeo good luck in their new roles.”
Darius McDermott, managing director at Fund Calibre, said one of the factors deployed by the Jupiter Merian Global Equity Absolute Return fund is value, and so the fund is likely to perform well when value equities are in vogue, as is presently the case.
david.thorpe@ft.com
