With some interesting exits and a wave of new appointments in recent months you could be forgiven for wondering about the apparent change process currently underway at Henderson Global Investors. Phil Jefferson, Director of UK Wholesale, comments on the changes being made and the reasons why.
At the end of last year Henderson de-merged from within its former parent AMP and our CEO Roger Yates took this opportunity to initiate a major overhaul of the business with the primary goal of re-establishing Henderson as a prominent force in the UK financial services market.
Extensive and fairly aggressive changes are underway and we are determined to mirror our outstanding successes in sectors such as hedge funds, property funds and structured products. We know there are other areas where we can, and will, do much better for example in the UK, Pan-Asia and European OEIC funds, SRI and Multi-Manager.
Our task lies not just in improving investment performance in these products, although I see this as a critical determinant, but also in modernising our overall distribution model. We already have one of the industry’s most impressive manufacturing capabilities, but many of our very successful products have gone largely unnoticed in our core markets. We must improve external awareness of these strengths, bringing top-quality established products to your market whilst re-assessing and re-shaping those that have under-performed for long periods.
The pace of change is already impressive. We have re-structured our divisional management reporting lines such that we now have 2 pivotal CIO roles driving change in the investment management area. Andrew Formica, Head of Equities, is re-aligning his sector teams, introducing more analytical resource and more process- driven input to complement the natural skills of our managers. David Jacob has recently been appointed from UBS as Head of Fixed Income, a move that can only strengthen our fixed income offering.
What should you look out for?
Well for a start, improving fund performance figures throughout the rest of 2004 into 2005. Naturally the effectiveness of these changes will take some time to show through, but in the meantime there are other exciting things just around the corner, not least in terms of the considerable product diversity already available. We can offer a number of interesting product options, some of them with low correlation to equities, that we believe will meet your clients needs.
How do you pick a hedge fund, for example?
With difficulty, some would say! Well why not buy the entire hedge fund sector through an FSA authorised OEIC vehicle coming to you in the New Year from the Henderson Investment Solutions team. Watch out for more news on this product during the coming weeks.
What about property funds?
Henderson’s successful property business is an established cornerstone of the Group. Discretionary managers can access the generalist UK Property Fund or even some of our specialist products e.g. ‘UK Shopping Centre’ fund or ‘City of London Offices’ fund. Advisers should look out for developments on the industry’s main supermarket platforms for our pan-European Property Fund.
With these and many other exciting developments at Henderson you will see us regularly in the trade and weekend press.
We look forward to talking to you soon.
Phil Jefferson
Director of UK Wholesale
