Gartmore Investment Management plc has added GBP 120 million of UK equity high alpha mandate wins in recent weeks to its growing list of recent institutional specialist business successes.

Gartmore confirmed that these monies include a substantial amount from a leading European financial institution already invested in the platform, plus new mandates from a number of high-profile UK pension fund schemes. This brings the total invested in Gartmore UK Equity High Alpha mandates to GBP 385 million since launch in October 2002.

The Gartmore UK Equity High Alpha platform - co-managed by Ashley Willing, Simon King, Sacha Sadan and Ben Wallace - has posted a highly-impressive performance of 49.7% since its inception in October 2002 and has outperformed the FTSE All-Share Index by 16.5%. UK Equity High Alpha platform is a concentrated, high-performance UK equity strategy of 40 to 60 stocks targeting outperformance per annum of a minimum 3% over the FTSE All-Share Index.

Jon Thornton, Head of UK Equities at Gartmore said: "These wins underline Gartmore's experience and expertise in this growing area and is evidence that we are offering what investors are looking for." 

In the two years, Gartmore has undergone a radical transformation of its UK Equity portfolio construction process under new Head of UK Equities Jon Thornton. Several high profile names have been added to the team including Investec's Chris Burvill, Sacha Sadan from Universities' Superannuation Scheme, Rob Giles from Singer & Friedlander and Ben Wallace from Deutsche Asset Management

Gartmore recently announced that it has won approximately EUR 1 billion in specialist European Equities business over the last 12 months.