Can Euan Munro restore Newton IM as a household brand?
BNY Mellon UK subsidiary has ‘lost its way’ following departures of heavy hitting managers
Euan Munro will have to turn his attention to manager retention and building Newton Investment Management’s core equity and fixed interest proposition if he wants to restore the “lost” fund brand into a household investment name, commentators have said.
BNY Mellon Investment Management unveiled last week it had nabbed Aviva Investors boss Munro to take the reins of its UK funds business Newton.
Much like his arrival at Aviva Investors in 2014, the SLI Gars architect joins Newton at a crossroad for the business. The fund group has been struggling to hold onto its heavy hitters, with global income manager Nick Clay among the biggest recent casualties, and has struggled to grow assets above £45bn.
Source: Trustnet
Though not delivering investors a negative return, the £24.6m China fund, run by Ruth Chambers, has lagged peers in the sector, particularly on a five-year view where it has returned 99.5% against the average IA China fund’s 124.9% returns.
However, the fund board noted in the case of the China, European Opportunities and India funds the managers had only been appointed to the mandates fairly recently. Thomas Smith took over European Opportunities in January 2019 following the exit of Neptune’s European equities heavyhitter Rob Burnett. Similarly Chambers and Ewan Thompson, who runs the £39.3m India fund, took over their mandates in 2018.