Is global equities the place to be within Scots asset management?

Martin Currie has unveiled another two hires within its investment team, which is a further sign that asset managers in Scotland are open to hiring once again. However, it may still be overly optimistic to suggest that definite expansion plans are on the cards.

The Scottish fund manager has hired Christine Montgomery, previously with Edinburgh Partners and Neil Robson, who joins from Pioneers Investments in Dublin, for its global equities team. The pair will start at Martin Currie by the end of the year.

Willie Watt, CEO of Martin Currie, said: "We have recognised that clients are moving from a home-market bias to allocating assets on a global basis - and this trend is only accelerating. In order to deliver the products to meet this demand, we have invested heavily in our research and portfolio-management capabilities."

And perhaps this is a telling comment - rather than looking to build recruit across the board, asset managers north of the border are currently largely restricting hires to global equities expertise.

Colin McLean, managing director of SVM Asset Management, believes so: "There's been a growing interest in global mandates and firms looking towards unconstrained global funds within organisations in Edinburgh and elsewhere - particularly institutional segregated accounts. This one of the few areas where firms are actively hiring."

Nonetheless, as we noted previously, there has been churn within the Scottish fund management industry recently. Admittedly, a large proportion of this has been the comings and goings at Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, which has just taken on another 12 people after sale of Insight Investment Management. 120 people are also losing their jobs as a result of the deal.

"Clearly there has been some uncertainty over Lloyds and SWIP, and some people there are looking to see what the prospects are elsewhere," adds McLean. "Most firms have also engaged in a degree of downsizing over the last year, and some those people are beginning to emerge at other firms again."

Dougie Adams, an adviser to the Ernst & Young Scottish Item Club, also believes that recruitment within Scotland's asset management sector is still relatively muted.

"Asset management in Scotland has been heralded as a sector which has weathered the global storm relatively well," he says. "But while this might be the case, certainly compared to the banks, I know a number of firms north of the border which still have hiring freezes in place."