ScotWids adds two to its UK equities desk

The UK equities desk at Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (Swip), is to be expanded by two members of the Standard Life UK small-cap team.

Gregor MacDonald and Ian Cormack are to join the group in three months time and will be running a UK small-cap fund for the retail market.

Last week, Investment Week reported that Scottish Widows plans to rebrand and ringfence between 12 to 14 mainly former Hill Samuel funds as a range aimed exclusively at the intermediary market. These will be managed with an aggressive 30 to 40 stock approach.

Swip chief investment officer Sandy Nairn has overhauled the group's investment process, instituting a head of research for each equity market area. In the UK, David Erskine has the job of ensuring sector and stock research generated by fund managers and analysts is implemented across all funds.

Every fund manager has sector responsibilities but their job is primarily to construct portfolios using the ideas generated by the research structure.

As such, Graham Campbell, head of retail on the UK equities desk, said the portfolios of the intermediary range of funds will be composed of the group's best ideas, as brought together on Swip's approved stock list. The funds are in no way intended to be index-plus style portfolios but predominantly based on stockpicking decisions, he said.

Stock templates enable the strength of ideas to be compared easily, allowing managers to construct portfolios giving the best ideas greatest prominence.

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