SJP expands unit trust range with Woodford, Purves and Peirson vehicles

Invesco Perpetual’s Neil Woodford is one of a trio of highly regarded managers appointed to run balanced managed unit trusts for St. James’s Place.

Based upon three existing St. James’s Place life and pension funds, the group has created unit trust versions of the vehicles after noting strong expressions of interest from its investor base.

Woodford runs the new SJP Strategic Managed fund, while Schroders’ Nick Purves is at the helm of the SJP Managed Growth vehicle and Axa Framlington’s Richard Peirson controls the SJP Balanced Managed product.

Both Woodford and Purves already run unit trusts at St. James’s Place, managing the £819m SJP UK High Income and £638m Equity Income respectively.

The new unit trust launches follow three further recent additions to the St. James’s Place range, to be run by other top managers such as BlackRock’s Mark Lyttleton and First State’s Jonathan Asante.

St. James’s Place CIO Chris Ralph says the addition of the balanced managed products have filled a gap which existed in its unit trust range.

“This move was simply a response to demand from our partners. They have wanted to talk to clients about some of our existing propositions but have not been able to do so because they did not sit within our unit trust range,” he says.

“While we expect a good take-up of these products, broadly speaking we are seeing strong demand across our fund range. Our investors are definitely feeling more positive about the investment markets.”

Ralph, the former Fidelity and Maia Capital multi-manager, says St. James’s Place has been able to build a strong suite of products from a wide range of fund groups.

“What St. James’s Place has been able to do very well is to combine some well known managers, such as Neil Woodford and Nick Purves, with those who are less well known in the retail space like Bernie Horn at Polaris,” Ralph adds.

At the end of March, Woodford’s St. James’s Place Invesco Perpetual Managed fund had 39.3% in UK equities, 14.1% in European equities and 11.9% in North American equities.

The manager also had 22.7% in cash and fixed interest holdings. His largest individual holding is a 11.9% position in the SPDR Trust Series 1, an ETF tracking the performance of the S&P 500 index.