European equity success story Michael Clements is set to leave Franklin Templeton, it has emerged, just days after the group said it was closing his fund to new investments.
Mr Clements is lead manager of the €3.1bn (£2.47bn) Franklin European Growth fund, a highly concentrated pan-European mandate based in Luxembourg, along with Claire Manson and Robert Mazzuoli.
Ms Manson is also leaving the group, with the duo set to exit on August 1 to “pursue new opportunities”, according to a statement from the firm.
The fund has been a major success for Franklin Templeton, rocketing in size in recent years as the bottom-up fund manager took a bullish approach at the depths of the eurozone sovereign debt crisis that paid off in the subsequent recovery.
In June 2012 Investment Adviser reported that the fund had just €323m under management and the manager was amassing a major position in the so-called eurozone periphery - the region that suffered the most in the crisis.
It gained 43.3 per cent in the three years to June 27, ranking it fourth out of 40 funds in the sector, according to Morningstar.
Last week the group said it was ‘soft closing’ the fund - a way of reducing the amount of new investment into a fund which companies often take in order to protect existing investors from the deleterious effects of excessive portfolio size.
Mr Clements has also run the group’s UK-based £29m Franklin European Opportunities fund, a Continental European product, with Ms Manson and Stephen Flynn since September 2013.
When the manager took over the UK-based fund it was called Templeton Europe and it had been suffering from poor performance. Mr Clements brought the more concentrated style of the Luxembourg-based fund onto the ailing fund, cutting its number of stocks from 70 to the 30-35 range.
The group also renamed its UK Select Growth fund as UK Opportunities at the time as part of a wider fund-range revamp.
Mr Clements joined Franklin Templeton in 2008 from UBS Global Asset Management, where he was an analyst covering the materials sector.
