Liontrust has hired Victoria Bates to specialise in smaller companies on its economic advantage team.
Anthony Cross and Julian Fosh, the current members of the economic advantage team, will be joined by Ms Bates in June. The team manages the Liontrust Special Situations fund, the Liontrust UK Growth fund and the UK Smaller Companies fund.
She will work with Anthony Cross to research, analyse and select small caps for the team’s funds.
Mr Cross said: “We are finding a lot of potential investment opportunities across the small cap universe and have been looking to recruit someone who can help us to analyse and monitor in depth a broader range of smaller companies.”
Ms Bates joins from finnCap where she is deputy head of corporate broking.
In the past year, the £1.5bn Liontrust Special Situations fund has underperformed its index, the FTSE All-Share. The fund returned 4.3 per cent in the year to the end of February, while its index returned 5.6 per cent, according to data from FE Analytics.
