Temple Bar has announced that the respected value manager Alastair Mundy, who has been the individual portfolio manager of the Trust since 2002, has been given an extended leave of absence by the trust’s manager, Ninety One, for health reasons. With immediate effect, Alessandro Dicorrado and Steve Woolley have been appointed by Ninety One as co-portfolio managers to manage the assets of the Trust in Alastair’s absence. They will also be managing Alastair’s three open ended funds: the Cautious Managed, UK Special Situations and UK Total Return funds.
Alessandro and Steve are already co-portfolio managers for the Ninety One Global Value strategy, and they have reportedly worked closely Alastair for many years. Temple Bar’s board has said that it will monitor the new arrangements and will communicate again with the company’s shareholders in due course.
About Temple Bar
Temple Bar’s investment objective to provide growth in income and capital to achieve a long term total return greater than the benchmark FTSE All-Share Index through investment primarily in UK securities. The Company’s policy is to invest in a broad spread of securities with typically the majority of the portfolio selected from the constituents of the FTSE 350 Index.
The Manager’s investment approach is premised on a contrarian view on the timing of buy and sell decisions, buying the shares of companies when sentiment towards them is thought to be near its worst and aiming to sell them as fundamental profit improvement and/or re-evaluation of their long-term prospects takes place. The belief is that repeated investor behaviour in driving down the prices of ‘out of favour’ companies to below their fair value will offer investment opportunities. This will allow Temple Bar to purchase shares at significant discounts to their fair value with the aim of selling them as they become more fully valued, principally as a result of predictable patterns in human psychology.