AJ drops Fiduciary as sole manager

Armstrong Jones is dropping Fiduciary Trust Company International as sole manager of its international share portfolio after more than a year of poor returns.

Massachusetts Financial Services will take over management of 52.5% of the portfolio, while Oppenheimer Capital will handle 18.5%.

Fiduciary, which previously looked after the entire international share portfolio, will retain management of 29%.

The change follows a management review that began last September and included input from independent international consultants, Armstrong Jones chief investment officer David McClatchy says.

The changeover will take place during the first quarter.

A downturn in the world economy has hit returns from international share funds in the last 15 months, he says.

"And we recognise that we’ve had a poor international performance."

Fiduciary is a growth manager, but was not a spectacular performer when growth was in vogue. Likewise it suffered badly when the markets switched from a growth bias to a value one.

AJ is confident the management change will improve returns. It estimates that if it had been using the three managers during the last year returns would have been in the first and second quartiles.

McClatchy says AJ made the change because it wants the investment strategies adopted by its managers to be consistent with its own.

"But we also want the risk-adjusted return from our managers to be high."

AJ has also announced that it will adopt the name of its parent, ING.

The firm, which becomes ING NZ on March 4. It has traded as Armstrong Jones for 13 years but has been owned by ING since 1996.

ING, which has $1 trillion funds under management, is the world’s ninth largest financial services company.

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