Simon Edelsten, 61, lead manager of Mid Wynd will retire as a partner of Artemis Investment Management LLP at the end of 2023. Co-manager Alex Illingworth is also leaving the business.
Simon will be replaced as lead manager by Alex Stanic who will join Artemis as its head of global equities on 1 March 2023. Simon and Alex will work together over the period up until Simon’s retirement, with Alex taking the lead role from September, to ensure an orderly handover. In due course Alex Stanic will be joined by two other new members of the global equity team to supplement analysts, Bobby Powar and May Laghzaoui.
Alex Stanic joins Artemis from JP Morgan Asset Management’s international equity group. He spent seven years at JP Morgan, where he led on the global equity funds in the Global Specialist team, including the Global Unconstrained Equity Fund. Prior to that he was head of global equities at River & Mercantile, a division he set up in 2009.
The board says that it is not expected that the change in management will lead to any significant changes to the company’s investment focus, which is to identify investment themes likely to generate long term growth for shareholders.
Chairman, Russell Napier, said: “Simon Edelsten and Alex Illingworth have overseen a highly successful period in the company’s history. Since they took control of the portfolio, in May 2014, until 31 December 2022 the total return of Mid Wynd of 184% has been significantly ahead of the MSCI All Country World Index (GBP) return of 141%. The board would like to thank them both for their service to our shareholders over what have been tumultuous years in global financial markets; they leave the company in an excellent position to prosper from here“.
[Investors will have to take the board’s word for it that there will be no significant change to the investment focus, but given the wholesale change in the line-up, we would understand why investors would want to keep any position in the fund under review. Ahead of the news, the trust was trading on one of the narrowest discounts in the global sector. It may be that we see some modest widening of this in coming days.]
MWY : Mid Wynd says Simon Edelsten will retire