Three further important additions were made to the fund management team over the summer with the recruitment of Stephen Whittaker, Theodora Zemek and James Gledhill. Stephen joined New Star in July and took over management of the New Star UK Growth Fund. As manager of the Invesco Perpetual UK Growth Fund since launch in 1987, he consistently delivered outstanding results. Up to his departure the fund achieved top decile performance in the UK All Companies sector over three months and one, three and 10 year periods to end of 2002 [1].
Theodora will join in November to work with James in building New Star's retail corporate bond business. Theodora joins from M & G, where she was head of global fixed income and chief investment officer of M & G International. At M & G, she was responsible for launching the M & G Sterling High Interest Fund (now the M & G High Yield Corporate Bond Fund). This was the first British unit trust to invest purely in UK corporate bonds. James arrived in August from Morley Fund Management, where he ran institutional funds. Prior to that James was at M & G, working closely with Theodora on the fixed income team between 1995 and 2000.
By the end of New Star Investment Funds' first year in operation, retail sales totalled more than £800m, a sum raised from the 80,000 investors, and by the end of 2002 retail sales had risen to more than £1 billion.
In September, New Star's first retail fixed income product, the New Star High Yield Bond Fund, was launched with an estimated yield of 7% per annum [2]. The company also opened the New Star Japan Hedge Fund, originally launched in April 2002, to new investors.
Sources
[1] Standard & Poor's, offer to offer, in sterling, net income reinvested as at 29.04.2002.
[2] Gross estimated income yield is 7.06%, estimated gross redemption yield is 6.82% net of charges, gross of tax.