Threadneedle High Yield Manager Arrives at Pictet

Several new appointments and some interesting new funds are among this week's highlights from the funds industry

Holly Cook 25 February, 2011 | 7:07PM
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New Appointment at Pictet Forces Review of Threadneedle Fund
Pictet Asset Management, the institutional asset management arm of the Swiss private bank Pictet & Cie, has appointed Roman Gaiser as head of High Yield and Andres Sanchez Balcazar as co-head of the Global and Regional Bond team.

Gaiser was previously senior portfolio manager at Threadneedle Asset Management where he co-managed the EUR 3 billion Threadneedle European High Yield Bond franchise. Following his departure, Morningstar analysts have placed their Superior qualitative rating for the Threadneedle European High Yield Bond fund under review. The new manager is the experienced Barrie Whitman, who was previously number two on the fund and is the current head of high yield at Threadneedle. Gaiser starts at Pictet in April.

Pictet’s second new appointment, that of Balcazar, sees the former Western Asset Management senior portfolio manager join Pictet next month.

Aviva Investors Shines Spotlight on Absolute Return with New Appointment
Aviva Investors has appointed Dan James as Head of Global Aggregate Portfolio Management. James will be responsible for implementing strategies and asset allocation across all global aggregate portfolios, while also promoting Aviva Investors global aggregate products and developing high-margin absolute return solutions. James joins from Fischer Francis Trees and Watts, where he was most recently Head of Short Duration and Absolute Return, and he starts at Aviva next week.

ING Adds to Management Board with Former BlackRock Player
BlackRock’s André van den Heuvel is to join ING Investment Management in May of this year as a member of the management board and will be heading up the European marketing and sales activities. Van den Heuvel was responsible for the overall Benelux Institutional Business Organisation and Business Development at BlackRock and has previously held positions at F&C and Robeco. He assumes the position of Chief Marketing Officer from Michel van Elk, who since November 2009 has fulfilled that role alongside his responsibilities as CEO ING IM Europe.

Charlemagne Sees Opportunities in North African Unrest
At a time when all eyes are firmly fixed on the Middle East and North Africa amid a spreading streak of protest and revolution and, particularly in the case of Libya at present, violence, Charlemagne Capital has this week launched its Magna MENA fund. The Dublin-domiciled, UCITS III fund has around 90% of its assets allocated to GCC countries (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar). The specialist emerging markets group believes the GCC region will benefit from structural change in the long term as individual economies diversify away from oil and gas and as they move to better exploits their resources.

Charlemagne says the North African countries in the region offer more traditional emerging market attributes such as attractive demographics and rising income per capita, and they will be closely monitoring events as they expect market inefficiencies to create good opportunities. The fund will be led by Mark Krombas, who joined the company last year from GLG/SocGen where he was responsible for managing the MENA funds.

SWIP Proposes Merger of Two UK Equity Funds
Scottish Widows Investment Partnership has written to shareholders proposing the merger of its UK Advantage fund into the UK Opportunities fund in order to benefit from economies of scale. Both funds are currently managed by Peter Cockburn and have total expense ratios of 1.63%-1.64%. If approved by shareholders, the new enlarged UK Opportunities fund, which currently has a Standard qualitative rating from Morningstar analysts, would have total assets under management of £141 million on current data.

Shareholders will vote on the proposal at an EGM on March 16 and the new fund will begin dealing from April 11 if approval is granted, from when the UK Advantage Fund will be closed.

New Manager for HSBC Chinese Equity Fund
HSBC Global Asset Management has appointed Mandy Chan as manager of the HSBC GIF Chinese Equity fund to replace Richard Wong. The manager change comes after the fund underperformed its sector over one, three and five year time frames according to Morningstar data. Chan has been at HSBC for 15 months and also manages the HSBC China Dragon, China Momentum and China A funds.

Morningstar Announces Nominees for 2011 UK Fund Awards
For more information, please click here.

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Holly Cook

Holly Cook  is Manager, Morningstar EMEA Websites

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