Fund Times: 8 – 12 December

A difficult week for New Star gets worse; JPMorgan to launch US Equity Income fund; Skandia removes Gartmore from UK equity mandates; and Newton drops Strategic from Corporate Bond fund name.

Tom Whitelaw 12 December, 2008 | 12:25PM
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A difficult week for New Star gets worse
New Star has this week been forced to announce the temporary suspension of its Heart Of Africa fund after a number of large redemptions made worse by the closure of the Ghanaian market and trading suspensions in Nigeria. The size of the fund has shrunk to just £29 million before suspension, a steep fall from the £770m of assets under management at the end of July this year. The fund is not expected to open this week but the group does expect it to start trading again in the near future.

Elsewhere there is more bad news for the group as Richard Pease’s offshore New Star GIF European Growth fund loses its biggest single investor. News of Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie’s head

of fund research Laurent Auchlin’s withdrawal could not come at a worse time for the group who are struggling to stem outflows across the board.

JPMorgan to launch US Equity Income fund
JPMorgan Asset Management announced this week that it is to launch a US Equity Income fund to take advantage of some of the most attractive valuations the group has seen for 30 years. As a result the JPM US Equity Income will launch on 15 December and will target a yield of 1% above that of the S&P 500 through investing in mid and large cap US equities. .

Skandia remove Gartmore from UK equity mandates
Skandia Investment Group this week announced that it has removed Gartmore from the management of the firm’s UK equity mandates. As a result the management of the Skandia UK Equity Blend, Aggressive, Balanced and Cautious funds passes to Mirabaud managers Edward Peter-Hoblyn and Phillip Watson. The news comes shortly after Gartmore announced the redundancies of a number of key fund managers from their UK range as detailed in last week’s Fund Times.

Elsewhere Skandia announced that it will not be paying initial charges to fund managers on their Selestia platform from 1 January. Skandia hopes the move will increase the transparency of charges to investors using the platform. The group notes the scale of its operation allows them to negotiate better deals with fund managers which it can pass on to the end investor.

Newton drop Strategic from Corporate Bond fund name
Newton Investment Managers this week announced that it is changing the name of its Newton Strategic Corporate Bond Fund to the Newton Corporate Bond Fund. The change in the fund’s name has become necessary following the decision by the IMA to split the existing UK Corporate Bond and the UK Other Bond sectors into three new sectors, namely £ Corporate Bond, £ Strategic Bond and £ High Yield. Newton Strategic Corporate Bond was previously in the UK Corporate Bond sector. However, following the change in the number and definitions of IMA fixed income sectors, it has been decided that, based on its investment objective and strategy, the £ Corporate Bond sector is the most appropriate in which to place this fund. Therefore, it became necessary to ensure the fund’s name was clearly identifiable with that of its newly-created IMA sector. Newton notes there are no further implications for the fund arising from this name change.

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