John Kennedy, the former manager of the Scottish Investment Trust, is to spearhead the debut of a Chinese investment house in the UK market.
Mr Kennedy spent 21 years at the £913m Scottish Investment Trust – one of the UK’s longest running closed-ended funds having launched in 1887 – before announcing a surprise departure in July last year.
He has now been appointed an investment director, tasked with guiding Harvest Global Investments’ London launch. He will report to chief executive Jeff Lim.
The fund group said it was the first Chinese house to open a base in London, where it aimed to develop its Asian equity and fixed income businesses.
Last year, the group unveiled the Harvest China A Shares Equity fund, the first actively managed A-shares Ucits fund with daily liquidity, although it did so in conjunction with London-based Heptagon Capital.
Until recently, only 1 per cent of China’s domestic A-share market was owned by foreign investors, largely due to restrictions placed on foreign ownership.
However, the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect initiative, which came into force last year, has made the market more open to overseas investment.
Under Mr Kennedy’s management from August 1992 to July 2014, the Scottish Investment Trust performed in line with its benchmark index, the FTSE All World. It returned 108.1 per cent, compared to the index’s 109 per cent, according to the trust’s factsheet.
