Janus Henderson, manager of Bankers (BNKR), the underperforming £1.3bn global investment trust, has appointed technology fund manager Richard Clode to run the bulk of its assets.
Clode, manager of the £1.7bn Janus Henderson Global Technology Leaders fund for 11 years, will work as co-manager with Alex Crooke, the trust’s lead manager since 2003. After a two-month handover he will take over the North American portion of the portfolio, accounting for nearly 62% of the trust’s assets.
The company said Clode’s “significant experience investing in technology will be particularly valuable, given the dominance of tech in driving growth across the US market.”
Bankers has not kept up with the tech-led rally in global markets with net asset value growing 48.2% in the five years to 30 June, underperforming the 80.5% total return from its FTSE World index benchmark, according to its latest factsheet.
By contrast, the company says the Global Technology Leaders open-ended fund, which Clode has run with Alison Porter and Graeme Clark, has been top quartile over one, three and five years under his tenure, returning more than 500% over the last decade.
According to figures from Janus Henderson, at 31 July, the fund had delivered an annualised 19.5% return over the previous decade, 2.5% more than its peer group average but below the 20.6% return from the MSCI ACWI Information Technology and Communication Services index.
Clode started his 22-year portfolio management career at Herald (HRI) investment trust before moving to Gartmore, Moore Capital and Pioneer Investments and joining Janus Henderson in 2014.
Crooke said: “Having worked closely with Richard for nine years, I have seen first-hand the depth of his knowledge and his ability to harness it effectively in order to deliver for his clients. I know that he will be a brilliant addition to the team”.
In a video on the Janus Henderson website, Clode said in recent years he had experience of the disruption wrought by internet challengers as well as trying to identify the winners in the race towards artificial intelligence.
Clode said he wanted to bring the strong performance he’d helped achieve to the Bankers’ “US sleeve, which is obviously the heartland of technology and innovation and also probably the start of seeing that disruption in other sectors.
“And I think ultimately if we can get on the right side of that in terms of capturing the winners out of this as well as avoiding some of those disrupted, you know that will deliver some great performance in the portfolio.”
Crooke has addressed Bankers’ performance issues by increasing US allocation from around 40% two years ago and cutting the number of holdings from 170 a year ago to 100, according to Deutsche Numis.
Our view
James Carthew, head of investment company research at QuotedData, said: “Bankers’ short and long-term performance numbers rank towards the bottom of its peer group. In January, around the time of the annual results, the trust flagged its US and Mag 7 underweight as reasons why performance had been relatively poor and said it would address that. If we look at the top 10 now, five of the Mag 7 feature, as does Broadcom (which is arguably a replacement for Tesla in that group). However, the missing ingredient is Nvidia. Having missed out on its spectacular rise, navigating the next stage may be tricky and a manager who knows technology could be useful.”
