Equities exodus forces Swip into shake-up

Published on Wednesday 5 May 2010 21:09

SCOTTISH Widows Investment Partnership (Swip) yesterday revealed it had restructured its equities operation after its emerging markets team was raided by Martin Currie for the second time in less than a fortnight.

Swip has combined its global developed and global emerging markets equity teams into a new international equities team to be headed by Mike McNaught-Davis after six of its seven-strong emerging markets team defected to its Edinburgh rival.

The new team will cover global, Japanese, US and emerging market equity funds with a total 6.3 billion in assets.

McNaught-Davis joined Swip's global developed markets team in March 2008 as investment director responsible for managing its Europe, Australia and Far East funds.

The restructure came as it was revealed that Andrew Ness, Jeff Casson, Mohammed Zaidi and Divya Mathur would be leaving its global emerging markets team to join Martin Currie.

The four managers follow in the footsteps of Kim Catechis, head of global emerging market equities, and Alastair Reynolds, global emerging market equities investment director, who will join Martin Currie later this year. The six managers ran more than 2.2bn at Swip and collectively have more than 91 years' emerging market experience.

Willie Watt, chief executive at Martin Currie, said: "We have made it clear that we want to build a globally competitive emerging market capability. By first hiring Kim Catechis and Alastair Reynolds and now the rest of their team, we have done just that."

No leaving date has been set for the latest departures from Swip. In the meantime, Swip said the team would work with McNaught-Davis and the international equities group.