GAM hires former Artemis Income manager Adrian Gosden

Mr Gosden, who has been appointed investment director at GAM, left Artemis in June last year after 13 years at the company. He managed Artemis Income alongside veteran investor Adrian Frost, and from 2014 Nick Shenton. He was also co-manager of Artemis High Income Fund (GB00B2PLJN71) alongside Alex Ralph.

"The challenge for Adrian Gosden will be to see how he works without being part of that [Artemis] team," said Darius McDermott, managing director of research company FundCalibre. "He was a solid co-manager and he's got a lot of experience having worked with Adrian Frost for a long time. It'll be interesting to see over the next year or so how his new fund performs."

Since Mr Gosden's departure from Artemis last year Mr Frost and Mr Shenton have continued to manage Artemis Income. This fund has returned 11.1 per cent over one year, slightly less than its benchmark, the FTSE All-Share Index's return of 12.6 per cent, but ahead of the Investment Association (IA) UK Equity Income sector average of 9.8 per cent. It beats these benchmarks over longer periods and has a 12-month yield of 3.85 per cent.

Despite Mr Gosden's departure, FundCalibre has kept Artemis Income on its list of Elite rated funds because it is still run by Mr Frost who has 30 years' experience in the industry.

And analysts at research company Morningstar continue to have a positive opinion on this fund. "For investors seeking core exposure to UK equities with an above-market dividend yield and growing income stream, we still find this a solid product," said Peter Brunt, senior analyst at Morningstar. "While they are yet to have found a replacement for Mr Gosden, Mr Frost and Mr Shenton have coped well without him. They remain a complementary partnership that can add value over the long term. This is combined with what we believe to be a competitive price tag."

Artemis Income can be bought from platforms for an ongoing charge of 0.79 per cent.

But, Jason Hollands, managing director at Tilney Group, argues that when a team manages a fund it is difficult to understand the contribution each party is making to performance.

"As an investor seeing two names on a factsheet you don't necessarily know who is doing the day-to-day running of the fund," he said. "For example, the senior partner could be just lending their name to the fund so that the junior partner is more involved day-to-day. But as Adrian Frost ran this fund for even longer than Adrian Gosden I don't think you would want to sell Artemis Income to move into [Adrian Gosden's] new fund."

Artemis Income Fund (GB00B2PLJJ36)

Source: Morningstar as at 19/09/17, *Artemis as at 31/08/17

Performance

Source: Morningstar as at 18/09/17
 

Top 10 holdings as at 31/08/17 (%)

Source: Artemis

Sector breakdown as at 31/08/17 (%)