Skandia Investment Group has moved swiftly following the news that Roger Guy is to retire from Gartmore, and has terminated a EUR38m mandate managed by Guy.
James Millard (pictured), CIO, Skandia Investment Group says: “As a result of the developments at Gartmore, we have today terminated our 10-stock EUR38m mandate run by Roger Guy within our EUR325m Skandia European Best Ideas Fund. The subsequent eight remaining world-class European managers will continue to run the fund. The European Best Ideas Fund remains well diversified and well positioned to continue its strong performance, which puts it in the first quartile of the Morningstar Europe Equity Large Cap Blend peer group and some 10% ahead of the MSCI Europe Index since launch.
“Within our other multi-manager funds, we currently have a further GBP150m invested across several mandates run by Gartmore which are not directly affected by the announcements today. We will continue to monitor the situation and will not hesitate to take appropriate action should we deem it necessary.”
SIG will immediately allocate the monies equally to the remaining eight managers within in the fund and will consider adding further managers from its ‘reserve bench’ in due course believing it is not necessary to do this immediately as the fund remains well diversified, with over 80 stocks following Roger Guy’s removal. The top ten names account for just over 22% of the portfolio and the largest stock position is just over 4% after the reallocation of Guy’s mandate.