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Mr Jones has been working within the Japan sector for 30 years and joined Omam in 1992. He will step down in April 2009 when management of the fund will be handed over to the firm's quantitative strategies team.

The investment objective will not change, but, rather than using a discretionary stock-picking approach, the team will cover the broad stock market "objectively and systematically" to build portfolios optimised for return and risk.

Over three years to November 27 2008, the fund has fallen by 23.6 per cent compared with the IMA Japan sector average loss of 22.6 per cent. Over the same period, the fund is ranked 23rd out of 47 funds, according to Morningstar.

Other changes taking place within the group include the appointment of Phil Hunter as the official manager of the £47m Old Mutual Asian Select fund. Mr Hunter had been managing the fund temporarily since last August upon the departure of Suresh Sadasivan, but will now take over officially.

Old Mutual said it made the decision to appoint Mr Hunter because he was very well qualified to take on the permanent role, and because the company had opted to postpone the recruitment of the head of emerging markets.

According to Morningstar, over three years to November 2008, the Asian Select fund returned 16.7 , compared with the IMA Asian Pacific ex Japan sector average of 7.9 per cent.

Other movements within the company include Nick Williamson joining the group as an analyst on the small and mid-cap team to work alongside Dan Nickols on the UK Select Smaller Companies fund.

Stephen Message has also joined as a large-cap analyst working with Simon Murphy on the UK Select Equity fund. He joins from US private wealth manager Bessemer Trust.