Gartmore loses 3 fund managers to Britannic |
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Sat, 08 Apr 2006 16:05
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LONDON: Leading U.K. fund management group Britannic Asset Management Ltd has secured the services of three key European fund managers of rival investment firm Gartmore, which has been put on the block by its U.S. owner Nationwide Mutual about three months ago.
The three executives -- Tim Callaghan, Adrian Darley and Jonathan Fearon -- will join Britannic's European equities team once their contracted terms at Gartmore ends. They will replace the existing Britannic European equities team Andrew Killean and Diane McEwan, who are leaving the firm.
Gartmore announced that Stephen Jones, its head of European equities, will take over as co-manager of the Gartmore European Focus Fund, currently being run by Callaghan. He will also co-head the European Growth fund and the SICAV Eurobloc fund, now run by Darley.
Britannic, the fund management division of closed life book consolidator Resolution Plc., is now in the process of becoming Resolution Asset Management. The firm's sales and marketing director Jonathan Pollin said the company intends to attract top fund management talent "given the more-than-doubling of assets under management from around 15 billion to 38 billion pounds in the past year".
Nationwide Mutual has put the British unit, which had some 47.4 billion pounds in assets in September 2005, on sale at the end of the year, but could not find a buyer. Though the unit had attracted several buyers, most of them withdrew. A bid from Gartmore's head of European retail and bancassurance Paul Feeney, who has the backing of some U.S. private equity firms, is the only valid one at the moment. Nationwide Mutual is known to be considering breaking up the unit into various sub-units and selling them in case a deal is not possible for the whole unit.
Gartmore does not want to admit it has lost the three strategically placed executives. It said it is still in negotiations with them to retain them.
Britannic said the new team will be based in London. It did not give details of when the three will formally join the firm.
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