Gartmore

Gartmore Investment Management has recently revealed plans to strengthening its private equity business and take on discretionary mandates on behalf of third party clients for the first time. According to Nick Shaw, who has recently been recruited from the Shell UK Pension Fund as part of the upsizing, the decision to increase its involvement in the asset class has been taken following the success of the group’s private equity investment strategy to date. Under Peter Gale, head of Gartmore’s tactical asset allocation and portfolio strategy group, the group’s asset allocation strategy has seen ‘fantastic performance’ with excellent private equity returns, in particular, following the its decision to go overweight on European mid-market buyout funds over the past five years. To date, Gartmore has put £600m into some 30 European vehicles managed by groups such as Apax, Bridgepoint, Permira, BC Partners, Cinven and Close Brothers as well as an additional £80m into co-investments such as Go, the low cost airline. Going forward, the group expects to attract mandates from UK pension funds and build a broad client base through its corporate network in Europe, Japan and the US. It has no plans to make direct investments. The private equity unit is shortly expecting to make several new appointments, bringing staff numbers up into double figures.

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• UK / Ireland