Jeremy Charles is latest new face to join Swip team

Published on Monday 19 July 2010 22:03

SCOTTISH Widows Investment Partnership (Swip) has named Jeremy Charles as investment director for UK equities in a further manager reshuffle at the Edinburgh-based firm.

Charles replaces Chris Bamberry, who recently became the latest fund manager to leave the Lloyds Banking Group-owned firm after a series of departures over the past year.

Last September it lost chief investment officer for equities, Graham Wood, to Edinburgh Partners, and head of equities, Robert Waugh, to Royal Bank of Scotland before four of its fixed-income team were hired by Alliance Trust, including global head of fixed income Rod Davidson.

More recently, Swip overhauled its emerging markets operation after six of its seven emerging markets team joined Martin Currie. Ian Vose, head of global developed markets equities, left at the same time to join Investec.

Charles joined Swip's Edinburgh-based operation yesterday, reporting to Peter Cockburn, head of UK equities. He has more than 23 years experience of asset management, most recently as senior portfolio manager at Aviva UK Life and previously at Shell and Canada Life. Swip said Charles would be involved in managing its core UK institutional and retail funds and would help drive the equity business strategy.

Cockburn said: "He is a valuable addition to the UK equities team at Swip. Jeremy's appointment will strengthen further our UK equity capability and help to evolve our investment process and product offering."

Swip also revealed yesterday that property fund manager Paul Findlay has been appointed chairman of the Investment Property Forum in Scotland, replacing Graham Sanders of Sanders Cartwright.