European equity fund manager Alexander Darwall has resigned from Jupiter and taken the £1bn European Opportunities investment trust with him.
Mr Darwall has left to "fulfill a long-held ambition to launch a small investment management business", to be named Devon Equity Management.
Yesterday evening Jupiter announced Mr Darwall’s resignation and within minutes the trust's board confirmed it was investigating the possibility of removing trust from Jupiter's management and taking it to Mr Darwall’s new company, subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.
Mr Darwall has run the trust since its launch in 2000 and in that time the trust has returned 845 per cent, while the AIC Europe sector has returned 293 per cent.
Over the past five years the trust has returned 100 per cent while its sector returned 44 per cent.
Mr Darwall stepped back from managing £7.7bn of European open-ended funds at Jupiter in April.
Jupiter confirmed that as part of the terms of Mr Darwall’s resignation, he has agreed not to compete with Jupiter in the Ucits market for two years.
The company had previously announced Mark Nichols would take over the running of the open-ended funds. Among those is the Jupiter European fund, a £5.5bn mandate that is the top performer in its sector over the past five years, returning more than twice the sector average over 10 years.
Mr Nichols joined the form from Columbia Threadneedle.
david.thorpe@ft.com
