Asset Allocator recently caught up with Adrian Gosden, a 30-year veteran of the UK equity income universe who is recently ensconsed at Jupiter.
Gosden has taken his Gam UK Equity Income fund to Jupiter and will take on the Jupiter Income Trust from April - one of the vehicles that had been run until recently by Ben Whitmore.
The Gam fund is owned by one of the allocators we follow, while the Jupiter fund isn’t owned by any.
Obviously Gosden will be hoping to fix that, particularly when he formally takes the helm of the Jupiter fund.
With that in mind, we can reveal he has a plan to achieve this. The Gam fund, which has just over £300mn in assets, will become a multi-cap income fund with the Jupiter fund retaining its current tilt towards large caps.
Unusually for a Ben Whitmore fund, the Income Trust isn’t owned by any of the allocators we cover.
Gosden commented that the name of this fund will also change, as many potential clients have expressed confusion about the vehicle which has the word 'trust' in its name despite being an open-ended fund.
In addition to that name change, Gosden believes demand for his former Gam fund will pick up because he is now at a firm “that is on the front foot and interested.”
The performance of the two funds, when managed by Whitmore and Gosden shows they both outperformed.
That might explain why the name is changing, unless one wants to go long doppleganagers.
As far as multi-cap income strategies go, we can see the attraction of this. The market is much smaller with only two funds in our database.
The most popular is Gresham House UK Multi-Cap Income which is owned by five allocators and the other is Premier Miton's Multi-Cap Income fund, which is run by Gervais Williams and appears in three of the portfolios we cover.
Indeed the Gresham House fund has been picked up three times in the past few months which suggests there may be a certain demand for this kind of vehicle.
