Mark Wharrier leaves Majedie as Chris Field takes over fund
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Income fund lost money over tenure
Mark Wharrier joined Majedie in 2018
Manager of the LF Majedie UK Income and UK Focus funds Mark Wharrier has left the firm, and will be replaced by fellow UK equities manager Chris Field.
Wharrier, who joined Majedie in 2018 after spending one year at Troy running its Income fund, has 25 years of investment experience across UK and international markets.
The drop is the result of managers who have increasingly specialised in investment styles across the funds industry, which drives less consistent performance in bifurcated markets.
Kelly Prior, investment manager in BMO Global Asset Management s multi-manager people team, said: The last 12 months has seen markets grapple with what the future will look like, with the first quarter of 2021 offering a taste of what might be to come in terms of volatility between styles of investing leading returns. We have been running the Fund Watch survey for over a decade, and since the global financial crisis the direction of interest rates has been a downhill street, allowing certain styles of investing to freewheel to the front of the leader board in the performance charts, while others have had to pedal hard just to stand still.
Only 1.8% of funds achieved top quartile returns over the last three years
‘Astonishing’ 103 out of 1,085 funds in BMO Gam’s Fund Watch survey managed to deliver above median returns over the period
The number of fund consistently achieving top quartile returns over three years has plunged below the historical average in Q1 2021 as stylistic skews toward value and growth and bifurcated markets have driven inconsistent performance.
BMO Gam’s Fund Watch survey found that just 1.8% of the 1,085 funds analysed from the 12 main Investment Association sectors consistently achieved top quartile performance over the last three 12-month periods, compared to 3.2% in the previous quarter and below the historic average of between 2% and 4%.
Investors may have to wait until 2025 for a return to pre-pandemic levels
After a torrid year for those in UK equity income funds, investors will be buoyed by the news that in the first quarter of this year UK dividends fell at their slowest rate since the pandemic began.
According to the latest UK Dividend Monitor from Link Group, compared with the 48.2% collapse in underlying dividends in the second quarter of 2020, payments in Q1 2021 fell by 26.7% to £12.7bn ($17.6bn, €14.6bn) which is the slowest rate of decline in the last 12 months.
To put this into context, according to Link Group over the last 12 months the pandemic has caused a 41.6% fall in dividends, with cuts totalling £44.8bn as some two-thirds of companies were forced to made reductions.