When Ross Teverson departed Standard Life Investments in June 2014 after 15 years at the asset manager to join the emerging markets team at Jupiter Asset Management, it came as a surprise to many in the industry.
Questions often arise when a longstanding fund manager suddenly leaves to join a competitor. Mr Teverson has been asked “many times” why he left Standard Life but insists he had a “positive experience” during his 15 years there.
“[I] was running a fund which was performing very well and an unconstrained fund, which is the way I think money should be managed,” he notes. “So really for me, it was all pull factors that brought me here to Jupiter.”
He adds: “There was an opportunity here at Jupiter to have an emerging markets team that’s focused entirely on running benchmark-agnostic products. We don’t think about the benchmark when we build our portfolios here. We’re simply looking for the highest-conviction ideas and then putting those high-conviction ideas together into portfolios that are built in such a way that we think they offer the best risk-reward proposition to investors.”
Another suggestion is that working for a smaller asset manager than the behemoth that is Standard Life Investments appealed to him.
“I think the culture here is very entrepreneurial and it’s also a meritocratic culture as well,” he says. “I think Jupiter offers an environment where individuals are given the support to thrive and to put into place the investment strategies they think are right. I certainly think that Jupiter, as a pure asset manager, can be focused on providing the right structure, having the right culture in place to ensure the best possible results as a fund manager, rather than being part of a big organisation.”
His interest in entrepreneurialism started as a teenager, when he imagined that he would have his own business one day. Even at that age, he says, he enjoyed buying bikes and motorbikes that he thought were undervalued and selling them on at a profit.
“It was only when I was at university, when I was looking at the various career options open to graduates, that actually going into fund management, and spending my time speaking to companies and taking a view as to what would make those companies successful, was an option for me,” he says. “Having thought about so many different business ideas myself over the years, that’s something that I thought would be fascinating.”
Prompted by one of his teachers, he studied for a geography degree. “The advice I was given when I went to university was, ‘Don’t do something because you think you should, do something because you think you’ll enjoy it,’” he says.
“So certainly I did my degree not with an idea that it would necessarily lead to a career in fund management. It was because I enjoyed geography, and geography is very much about taking insights from lots of different disciplines – whether it be economics, sociology or environmental sciences – and bringing together those insights in such a way as you understand how the world works.”
He then started work as a trainee investment manager, with a view to becoming a fund manager. “I went straight into a role on the Asian desk at Standard Life Investments, but I made it very clear throughout the whole interview process that I wanted to do something which had that broad geographical reach, because I’ve always travelled a lot,” he adds.
By living in Hong Kong for seven years, he indulged his passion while working at SLI. “It gave me an insight into the culture there which I couldn’t possibly have had from simply visiting Hong Kong,” he says. Interestingly, though, he thinks being based in London is “more conducive to good fund management”.
He notes: “Being based in Hong Kong, you’re surrounded by a lot of noise when looking at Asian markets – and so, while I’m grateful I had the experience of being out in Hong Kong, I actually feel in many ways analysing investment opportunities in Asia is better done in London.”
It was in Asia that Mr Teverson established his preference for an ‘unconstrained’ strategy. “A long time ago, initially when I was working in Hong Kong, I was running a pension fund, and that pension fund was index-aware,” says the manager. “So, risk for the fund was defined in terms of a tracking error relative to the benchmark, and it wasn’t personally how I would have wanted my own money [to be] run.
“Now, I personally would like all of my money to be invested in a compelling opportunity. And that’s what unconstrained gives me the ability as a manager to do: to completely disregard the benchmark and simply invest in those businesses where I think there is a good return proposition and… investments which come together in a portfolio to offer a very good overall risk-reward proposition as well.”
Jupiter already had a “huge amount of experience” on its emerging markets team when Teverson joined, though managers Kathryn Langridge and Philip Ehrmann subsequently left. “The significant evolution of the capability that’s already in place has been operating more as a team. So, twice a week we sit down around a table and we debate stock ideas,” he says.
“Another change is that, in addition to the regional focus and expertise that individuals on the team already have at Jupiter, we’ve formalised sector coverage as well, so each member of the team has sectors they have an expertise in, and that is useful for making cross-border comparisons.”
Earlier this year, Jupiter launched the JGF Global Emerging Markets Unconstrained fund for Mr Teverson to run. To assist in the management of the fund, he hired Franklin Adatsi, a former colleague at Standard Life, who joined the firm in April. Mr Teverson is keen to highlight Mr Adatsi’s investing credentials with regard to frontier markets.
“A lot of emerging market funds have relatively limited frontier exposure,” he suggests. “In our view, having the ability to branch out into frontier markets and have some frontier exposure in the fund, one thing it does is it improves return potential. Because in frontier markets, you do get some businesses experiencing significant positive change, but they’re not particularly well researched, so there’s not an awful lot of sell-side research written about the companies.”
Referring to the fund launch and hire, he remarks: “Those two changes have already taken place, those are the important ones. As time goes by of course, we may do things to further strengthen what we think is already a very attractive proposition.”
As speculation mounts about whether the Chinese growth story is over, investors in emerging markets and China have had a torrid few months. Observing the tumult from a distance reinforces Mr Teverson’s belief that London is the ideal location for emerging market investing.
But he says: “If you look at the Hong Kong-listed Chinese businesses, we still find companies today where there’s significant positive change for us to get excited about investing.
“It’s important investors don’t hear the headlines on China and get scared away from everything Chinese because actually, there are still some great opportunities.”
As for his plans for the emerging markets team at Jupiter, he says he has a simple approach in mind, “which is to work with a very robust process, with as much team co-operation as possible, and to keep uncovering interesting, underappreciated change in emerging markets.
“With that approach, we clearly aim to get strong differentiated performance. In our funds, we’re doing something very different from both the benchmark and much of the emerging market peer group.”
Ellie Duncan is deputy features editor at Investment Adviser
CV
Ross Teverson
2015 – present
Manager, Jupiter Global Emerging Markets fund, Jupiter China fund and Jupiter China Select Sicav
2014 – present
Head of strategy, global emerging markets, Jupiter Asset Management
2010 – 2014
Investment director, GEM equities, SLI
2005– 2010
Executive director, SLI Hong Kong Ltd
2005– 2010
Investment director, Asia Pacific equities, SLI
2002 – 2005
Investment manager, Asia Pacific equities, SLI
1999 – 2002
Investment analyst, Asia Pacific equities, Standard Life Investments (SLI)
