Fund house Artemis has appointed a new chief investment officer (CIO), replacing long-serving Peter Saacke, as outflows neared £1bn in 2019.
Matthew Beesley joins Artemis from GAM, where he was head of investments from 2017 until this year, and prior to that worked at Henderson Global Investors from 2012.
Mr Saacke will remain at Artemis as a fund manager and continue to run the Artemis Global Growth fund, the Artemis Global Emerging Markets fund, the Artemis Institutional Global Capital fund, and some segregated mandates.
The change happens at a time when there have been sharp outflows from Artemis's UK retail business. Data from Morningstar shows the company had net outflows of £971m in 2019. This compared with total net inflows of £614m the previous year.
The tide showed signs of turning at the end of 2019, as the company attracted net inflows of £54m in December.
Fatima Khizou, analyst at Morningstar, said: “Some of the outflows seen last year across on a number of their funds was due the fact they launched Sicav versions of the existing Oeics, so some clients moved out from Oeic to Sicav.
"The other one is on the absolute return side which has seen some outflows in line with the sector but some of it could be explained by the manager change too.”
Stephen Moore, who jointly ran the Artemis US Extended Alpha and US Absolute Return funds resigned from the firm in September for "personal reasons."
Artemis also moved some clients into segregated mandates during the year, particularly clients of its Artemis Income fund.
Artemis' strategy in recent years has been to hire long-established managers from rival fund houses and get them to drive inflows to the company by launching new products at Artemis.
Examples of this include Ed Leggett, who joined Artemis in 2015 from Standard Life Investments, Cormac Weldon, who joined from Threadneedle in 2014, and more recently, a number of bond fund managers headed by Stephen Snowden, who joined from Kames.
Mark Murray, senior partner at Artemis, said: “Peter will stand down from the role of CIO with our thanks for all he has done. I am delighted that we will be welcoming Matthew as our new CIO. His experience and record speak for themselves.”
david.thorpe@ft.com
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