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Former Jupiter star fund manager Ben Whitmore has launched the first fund for investors under his new Brickwood brand, months after departing the company along with other employees.
The new fund from Whitmore — who at his peak managed about £10bn for Jupiter — will focus on buying shares in undervalued UK companies that are out of favour with many investors.
Whitmore set up Brickwood with former Jupiter manager Dermot Murphy and his brother, Kevin Murphy, who joined from Schroders. Claudia Ripley also left her role at Jupiter as an investment director to become chief executive of Brickwood.
The departure of Whitmore and his colleagues at the end of last year dealt a blow to Jupiter, as his team were accountable for managing about a fifth of Jupiter’s total £50bn in assets under management.
“He was one of the stars of the show at Jupiter — he managed a huge amount of Jupiter’s assets,” said Ben Yearsley, of consultancy Fairview Investing.
But he added: “It remains to be seen whether or not he can repeat that.”
Jupiter’s chief executive Matthew Beesley poached equity manager Alex Savvides from JO Hambro Capital Management to take on Whitmore’s former UK fund.
The TM Brickwood UK Value Fund, which will be co-managed by Whitmore and Kevin Murphy, is targeting both retail and institutional investors.
The fund’s holdings are expected to include companies that Whitmore also backed at Jupiter, such as pharmaceutical business GSK, energy major BP and Standard Chartered.
“We wanted to make our own mark by creating a boutique focused specifically on value investing,” Whitmore told the Financial Times.
Brickwood is also establishing a board of non-executive directors, in the hope that it provides an extra layer of governance to hold the fund managers to account.
Investment boutiques attracted intense scrutiny after the firm founded by former investment star Neil Woodford was forced to close in 2019. Woodford Investment Management had made a string of poor stock picks and invested too much in harder-to-trade unlisted and small stocks.
“We want to be highly focused on governance,” Whitmore said. “We’ve all had more scrutiny in the post-Woodford world, and rightly so. We will welcome feedback from our board.”
UK equity fund managers have suffered a difficult period as investors have withdrawn their money in favour of global stocks, in particular US growth companies such as chip designer Nvidia.
According to fund network Calastone, individual investors withdrew more than £1bn from UK equity funds last month. Others argue the relative value of UK stocks makes London-listed companies more attractive.
Whitmore said Brickwood was likely to launch a value fund focused on global stocks in the future.
Whitmore had returned 26 per cent over three years up until his departure last October, according to Citywire, making him one of the best performing UK equity managers.
Jupiter briefly considered handing Whitmore assets to run from Brickwood, but ultimately decided to retain the more than £600mn portfolio internally.
https://www.ft.com/content/4909c6a7-f09e-43ba-a795-cb2708ffce09
