HIGH-profile fund managers Chris Fontenla and David Keir as well as UK equities head Peter Cockburn are understood to be among 27 investment managers whose posts are to go after a revamp at Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP).
SWIP, owned by part-nationalised Lloyds Banking Group, said that taking account of four new positions being created, a net 23 jobs would be lost, equivalent to almost half its 51-strong equities investment team.
It comes after the house decided to use quantitative investment strategies, where computer programmes are used to determine investments, for many of the portfolios in its £54 billion equities business.
Mr Fontela, a former doctor who has been with SWIP for nine years, and Mr Keir, who worked for Edinburgh Fund Managers before he joined SWIP in 2004, ran the house's equity income fund as well as other portfolios and are among the best-known figures understood to have lost out in the changes.
A spokeswoman confirmed that Mr Cockburn's post of head of UK equities will not exist under the new structure but was unable to say whether he would be leaving the business.
One fund management industry source said: "The people who are going are probably the best people in SWIP."
SWIP confirmed that absolute return manager James Clunie, Gregor Macdonald and Andrew Paisley, who run its small cap portfolios, and Vicky Watson, who manages the SWIP European Real Estate Securities fund, will stay with the house.
Dean Buckley, managing director of SWIP, which runs £143bn of client assets, said: "We remain committed to active fund management in those markets where we have confidence that we can generate strong investment performance and build long-term, valuable relationships with clients.
"However, for some of our clients, a lower-risk approach to investment is more appropriate for their needs."
Andrew November, SWIP's director of equities, will oversee the new strategy with head of global equities Will Low taking on responsibility for its UK smaller companies, real estate securities and absolute return strategies.
Sean Phayre continues to head up the quantitative investments team, which currently has assets of £27bn.
SWIP said the process will take some months to implement and will result in the closure of a number of smaller funds.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article