A PROTÉGÉ of legendary First State fund manager Angus Tulloch has trebled his assets under management to £100 million in the past year.
Investment director Charles Heenan, who served under Tulloch at First State for seven years until 2007, launched Edinburgh-based Kennox Asset Management in 2009.
The company’s assets under management have grown from £33m in January to hit £103m at the start of December after an influx of mandates from high-end wealth managers, private banks and charities.
Kennox managing director Peter Boyle, a former head of equity capital markets at Santander’s London operations, said: “It’s not been an overnight success. We’ve been telling the same story since we started in 2009. So our growth is down to consistency – our fund has done exactly what it said it would do.
“We’ve had meetings with lots of wealth managers who now know and trust us and know we’re operating for the long term.”
The Kennox strategic value fund is the company’s sole vehicle and is made up of between 20 and 45 stocks, with no derivatives or hedging.
Boyle said: “Our main driver is capital preservation. We would expect to underperform frothy over-optimistic markets like late-stage bull markets but still preserve our capital. That’s why we’re up 59 per cent since 2007 while the market was up 17 per cent.”
The strategic value fund was set up in 2007 when Heenan left First State and teamed up with investment manager Geoff Legg.
The fund was originally housed within Australian boutique investment house MMC Contrarian until Heenan and Legg wanted to grow the fund. They set up Kennox with Boyle and chairman Michael Adam, one of the founders of Adam, Harding & Lueck, an investment manager snapped up by Man Group in 1989.
Heenan said: “I knew that I wanted to manage money by concentrating on just 20 or 30 stocks. At places like First State, you would be looking at 100 stocks.”
The fund’s biggest holdings include British stocks – such as BP, Shell and Tesco – alongside overseas shares, including Dutch insurer Delta Lloyd, German courier Deutsche Post and American healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson.
Kennox currently employs six staff and Heenan expects to recruit a junior manager this year.