Witan Investment Trust announces the appointment of two European equity managers
Appointment of CRUX Asset Management and S. W. Mitchell Capital
Witan Investment Trust (WTAN) has announced the appointment of two European equity managers: CRUX Asset Management and S. W. Mitchell Capital. CRUX is a specialist asset management company with an emphasis on European equities and S. W. Mitchell is an investment boutique focused exclusively on European equities. Each manager has been allocated c 5% of WTAN’s assets (c £100m), funded by the liquidation of the pan-European portfolio that had been managed by Marathon Asset Management, plus an additional £24m from WTAN’s cash resources. Both portfolios will be benchmarked against the FTSE Europe ex-UK index. Following the transition, WTAN will have 10 external managers, each running regional, high-conviction mandates. WTAN’s executive team will continue to manage up to 10% of the trust’s assets in collective funds.
The changes to the multi-manager line-up allow WTAN to increase its exposure to actively managed continental European assets following the improvements in the economic and political environment during 2017. Both CRUX Asset Management and S. W. Mitchell Capital run concentrated portfolios with high active shares (a measure of how far a portfolio deviates from a benchmark, with 0% representing full replication of the index and 100% representing no commonality between the portfolio and the benchmark). This will increase WTAN’s European active share from c 70% to 86% and its overall active share from c 74% (June 2017) to more than 76%.
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