Standard Life Investments has expanded the multi-asset team which counts the £22bn Global Absolute Return Strategies (Gars) fund among its responsibilities.
Chris Faulkner-MacDonagh, formerly of Ziff Brothers Investments, will join as a market strategist and Alex Wolf, formerly a US state diplomat, will be an emerging markets economists.
Mr Faulkner_MacDonagh will be responsible for analysing the primary drivers across all major asset classes while Mr Wolf will analyse the key emerging markets, such as China and India, and help to expand SLI’s understanding of the global business cycle.
The group has seen several key members of the multi-asset investing team leave in recent years, with Gars architect Euan Munro defecting to Aviva Investors and David Millar, Dave Jubb and Richard Batty joining Invesco Perpetual.
However, the massive £21.6bn Standard Life Investments Global Absolute Return Strategies (Gars) has preformed well so far this year even after it took a hit in October during a flight to safety from the market..
The fund has easily outperformed its six-month Libor benchmark with a 2.9 per cent return in the quarter.
SLI also endured a blow last month when it lost Ignis’s head of rates Russ Oxley and five member of his team, who joined OMGI. SLI had just a few months earlier completed its acquisition of Ignis.
After the new hires, SLI’s multi-asset and macro team will now have 49 people.
