UK equities bad, global equities good

While fund managers in Scotland with international equities expertise have found their services very much in demand, it appears that their counterparts with a UK-specific focus have fallen by the wayside to some extent.

Edinburgh-based fund manager Martin Currie has unveiled a shake-up of its UK equities team, which will see the merger of its UK growth fund into its global fund, and its UK equity income fund replaced by a global income fund.

Jeff Saunders, UK growth fund manager will leave the firm as a result.

"For several years retail and institutional investors have been net sellers of UK equities and net buyers of international and emerging markets and we believe this trend will continue. As such, we no longer see a need to offer as many UK equity products as we have historically," said Andy Sowerby, managing director of sales, marketing and client services at Martin Currie.

Obviously, one company's strategic move doesn't sound a death knell for UK equities, but there's further evidence that it's not a good place to be working currently.

Aberdeen Asset Management further supports the point, saying in its Q2 results that investors pulled 264m from UK equity mandates during this period, following outflows of 75m in Q1 and 34m in Q4 2009.

Edinburgh Partners also shut down its UK equities operation last year, leading to the departure of Graham Campbell, one of its founding directors.

Recruitment has been particularly quiet in this business area, suggests Betsy Williamson, managing director at Edinburgh-based recruiters Core-Asset Consulting.

"I haven't seen a vacancy for a UK equities portfolio manager for the last 12 months," she says.

There has been movement, however - Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP), for instance, has unveiled Jeremy Charles as investment director for its UK equities team. However, this was after a number of departures from the group.

By contrast, the global equities space has been relatively buoyant. Martin Currie has unveiled a string of new hires, since recruiting Christine Montgomery and Neil Robson last November, while SWIP is bolstering its team in this area. Standard Life Investments also recruited in this division earlier in the year.