Adrian Gosden, the former Artemis equity income manager who joined Gam in September, has revealed how he intends to compete in the equity income sector.
Mr Gosden is to run the Gam UK Equity Income fund, and said he will take a distinctly contrarian approach.
He previously jointly ran the £6.4bn Artemis Income fund with Adrian Frost.
He said the price to earnings ratio of the portfolio will be 12, which is considerably less than that of the market as a whole, with no place for some of the largest dividend-paying constituents of the FTSE 100 such as Unilever and Diageo.
Mr Gosden’s fund will also shun sectors he thinks have performed well in recent times, despite the obvious attractions of a high dividend yield.
Among the sectors he included in this is house builders.
The fund manager said he adds most value for investors through picking stocks in the upper end of the FTSE 250 scale.
In the FTSE 100, he is looking at investing in some of the banks.
Mr Gosden said he expects Gam to be his last job in the industry, (he is 47-years-old) and that he is "very very determined" to make this fund a success.
He has invested his own capital into the fund.
The fund will be co-managed by Chris Morrison, who has worked at Gam for seven years.
Gam has been on something of a spree this year, launching UK Oeic versions of its European, Emerging Market and Global Credit funds this year.
The fund house also bought asset manager THS (Taube Hodson Stonex) in May 2016.
Darius McDermott, managing director at Chelsea Financial Services, said the big test for Mr Gosden will be to prove he can operate a fund without the assistance of his previous colleagues at Artemis.
Mr Gosden said a key competency of Gam is fixed income.
He said he has always looked at the bond markets view of a company to help him price the equity, and this central part of his investment process can continue at Gam.
david.thorpe@ft.com
