Henderson to merge away Gartmore MM funds

Henderson Global Investors is to merge the three Gartmore Multi-Manager funds run by Tony Lanning and Bill McQuaker into its own range as part of an overhaul of its offering.

The group, which is also promoting a number of co-managers to work alongside head of multi-manager McQuaker, has proposed merging the £6m Gartmore Multi-Manager Active fund into Henderson’s own £429m Active portfolio.

It also plans to merge the £284m Gartmore Balanced and £71m Gartmore Cautious funds into the £133m Henderson Multi-Manager Managed and £652m Income & Growth portfolios respectively.

As well as merging the funds, Henderson has promoted Chris Forgan, Helen Bradshaw and Paul Craig to work as co-managers across the range with McQuaker and Lanning.

Forgan, who joined the group in 2005 from First State Investments, will co-manage the Income & Growth and Distribution multi-manager funds, while Lanning will become co-manager on the Managed fund.

Bradshaw, who joined the multi-manager team in 2006 from the product management team, will become co-manager on the Active fund alongside McQuaker.

Meanwhile Paul Craig, who joined from New Star in 2009 following its acquisition by Henderson, will co-manage the Gartmore Multi-Manager Absolute Return fund alongside Lanning.

McQuaker said the changes, which will also see the Absolute Return fund rebranded as Henderson, cement the team approach used across the range.

“There was a good overlap between the funds, and with the addition of the Absolute Return fund, Henderson now has a compelling offering for its clients,” he said.

“We had more than one fund in some spaces, so the proposed mergers streamline our fund range and leave us with a clear proposition across the risk spectrum.”

Henderson’s multi-manager range has some of the best performance among peers, with the Income & Growth and Distribution funds returning 24% and 25.4% respectively over three years, ahead of the Cautious Managed average return of 11%.

The Active and Managed funds have struggled recently, however, with Active returning 8.3% over one year, behind the Active Managed average of 14.8%, and Managed delivering 9.7%, behind the Balanced Managed sector average of 13.1%.
The changes, which will take place in August, are subject to shareholder approval.