InvestmentsJul 2 2020

Brooks Macdonald founder joins Edinburgh-based boutique

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Brooks Macdonald founder joins Edinburgh-based boutique
Jon Gumpel, director and fund manager at Aubrey Capital Management

Co-founder of Brooks Macdonald Jon Gumpel has joined Edinburgh-based Aubrey Capital Management after stepping down from the discretionary fund manager in October last year.

Boutique fund house Aubrey Capital announced today (July 1) Mr Gumpel had joined the firm as a director and fund manager.

Mr Gumpel was one of Brooks Macdonald’s four original founders in 1991 and saw the business through 28 years of growth. It floated on the London Stock Exchange in 2005 and the firm was managing £13bn of assets by the time he left in 2019.

While at Brooks Macdonald, Mr Gumpel initiated and led its intermediary distribution strategy and managed its defensive capital fund.

Aubrey's equity performance over the last three years and importantly in the year to date has been simply stunningJon Gumpel, co-founder of Brooks Macdonald

Founder of Aubrey Capital, Andrew Dalrymple, said: “We are very pleased to welcome Jon to Aubrey, where we feel his fund management skills and experience providing investment services to intermediaries will add significantly to Aubrey’s offering, benefiting our clients and the firm alike”.

Mr Gumpel said he had been “consistently impressed” with Aubrey Capital’s investment approach, adding that the fund house’s equity performance over the last three years had been “simply stunning”.

He added: “I look forward to working with a genuinely nice group of people and to adding value for the business.”

Over the past year, the Aubrey Global Conviction strategy has returned 30 per cent. By comparison, its peers in the IA Global Sector have returned just 5 per cent.

On a five-year basis, the fund has returned 136 per cent compared to a sector average of 63 per cent. It is in the top quartile over one, three, five and ten years.

Meanwhile the Aubrey Global Emerging Markets Opportunities fund is the best performer in the IA Global Emerging Markets sector over a three and six-month period, second best over the past year and top performer over three years.

It has returned 21 per cent over the past 12 months, while its peers lost 2.7 per cent, while investors have seen a 42 per cent return over the past three years compared to a sector average of just 7 per cent.

imogen.tew@ft.com

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