Jacqueline Lowe of Standard Life Investments has returned to the top of The Herald's fund manager performance league with one of the highest European-wide rankings recorded in the Citywire table for Scottish managers.

Ms Lowe’s three-year performance to May 31 drove her to 54 in the big industry table of 3892 managers, and to top place among the 114 managers working for houses with a significant Scottish presence.

Manager of SLI’s Dynamic Distribution fund, her returns have been partly driven by the fund’s big exposure to SLI’s own £1.3billion Equity Income Unconstrained fund, whose managers Thomas Moore and Ed Legget are placed third and fourth in the latest table.

Mr Legget quit SLI six weeks ago, poached by Artemis to run its £740m growth fund as successor to A-rated Tim Steer, placed 1409 in the latest table, who is retiring later in the year.

The same SLI trio also occupied three of the top four places in the September 2014 table, when Ms Lowe led the way but was ranked only 322 overall. This time around Mr Moore’s ranking is 108, up from 260 the previous month, and Mr Legget’s 144, up from 313.

Whereas eight months earlier there were no AAA-rated Scottish managers in the league, this time there are nine, with seven managers placed inside the top 200.

Maintaining his strong record is Jacob de Tusch-Lec of Artemis, who led the table in the three years to April 30 ranked 92. This time he is at 94, reflecting the consistent performance of his global income and monthly distribution funds.

Audrey Ryan, equity manager at Kames Capital, slips from third to fifth in the latest league, though her overall placing improves from 189 to 155, while Ben Russon, manager of several Franklin Templeton equity funds,drops from second to seventh and his placing from 155 to 199.

Peter Saacke, manager of European and global growth funds at Artemis, jumps from 412 to 161, placing him sixth in the Scottish mini-league.

The other AAA-rated managers are Colette Conboy of SLI at 345, and James Foster of Artemis at 380. Franklin Templeton’s Colin Morton at 400 completes the top 10 and leads the chasing pack of 26 AA-rated managers.

Big movers up the table include Caspar Trenchard (1135 to 670) managing both Ignis Smaller Companies fund and the UK Opportunities fund of Ignis’s new parent SLI; Sonal Desai (1260 to 671), global bond manager at Franklin, and two well-known names: Colin McLean co-founder of SVM Asset Management (1298 to 707) for his stewardship of one SVM and two Scottish Friendly funds; and David Cumming (1131 to 709) the head of UK equities at SLI.

The fund houses league sees Franklin Templeton out in front with 27 rated managers (up from 25) followed by SLI on 19 (up from 16) and Baillie Gifford on 15 (up from 11).