Investment platform AJ Bell has removed the Merian UK Smaller Companies fund from its Favourite funds list following a review prompted by the acquisition of Merian Global Investors by Jupiter Asset Management. The Merian fund has been replaced by the Tellworth UK Smaller Companies fund.
AJ Bell has also added the Evenlode Global Income fund to its list of Favourite funds.
Ryan Hughes, head of active portfolios at AJ Bell, explains the rationale for the changes:
“We have taken the decision to remove the Merian UK Smaller Companies fund from our Favourite funds list due to the corporate uncertainty that has arisen over the takeover of Merian by Jupiter. While lead manager Dan Nickols has committed to staying following the takeover, there is no clarity regarding the structure of the team. With this uncertainty likely to persist for some time, we feel it is prudent to act now, not least because we have a very strong replacement in the Tellworth UK Smaller Companies fund, managed by Paul Marriage. During his time at Cazenove and Schroders, Marriage built a superb track record and having set up Tellworth in late 2018, we have the opportunity to add this high quality and experienced manager with a much smaller fund to our Favourite funds list.
“We have added the Evenlode Global Income fund to Favourite funds in order to broaden the choice of global equity funds for customers. The Evenlode team have proven themselves to be highly skilled investors with their UK focused Income fund over many years which already sits on the Favourite fund list and we are pleased to add the global fund managed by Ben Peters to complement the existing global funds on the list.”