I would be lying if I said I wasn't worried. One manager leaving would be a blow however with most of the team left behind it might not be so bad, but all three leaving is a massive blow for RLAM and their investors alike. I expect large outflows.

It is my largest active holding and one I was quietly pleased with myself that I managed to get enough invested in before it hard closed.

Creates a real problem of what to do - stick for now and wait there may be a chance the portfolio is set for some near future continuation of performance, sell and move monies to a tracker, other actives or probably cheap large scale etfs.

I don't see an alternative active fund and don't see waiting around for their new fund as a realistic option - no idea when and where it will be available.

Also no guarantees the trio will outperform in a smaller boutique with less resources or maybe they will with less restraints and corporate to do's. Rajiv Jain hasn't done too badly with his boutique (I am a holder of two of his funds) with assets of around £100 billion since launching in 2016 but is a higher risk bet.

My inclination is a partial sell at a minimum but havent decided yet.

Sold r l global income buy jggi

I will sound like I am flip flopping, as I am a self declared fan of this fund. But it's again worth reminding ourselves that we look at performance, and then we find a narrative to explain why something has done well.

So RLGES has done well past few years, and I am drinking the Kool aid that's it's the managers highly differentiated approach, and their corporate lifecycle investing, and so on.

But weren't people saying the same thing about Fundsmith a few years ago? Who'd buy value stocks, just buy quality, high ROCE etc, he's a genius blah blah.

What if they were just right time, right place for their approach?

The fund has a record of outperforming in 20 years out of 23 which is astounding, however the blockbuster outperformance of recent years (underperformed in 2019 too, so it's 2020/21/22/23 where they've smashed it) is quite unusual.

At Waverton the performance was nowhere near as good.

They outperformed by 0.4 - 1.5% a year for 3 years, underperformed by 8% one year and outperformed by 4% one year (relative returns, in USD, vs MSCI World).

Since joining RLAM they underperformed in 2019, but have delivered 6/7% outperformance in all other years.

Maybe they got loads better at investing when joining RLAM, maybe they were held back from investing how they wanted to at Waverton and RLAM unleashed their potential, or maybe they just got lucky for a few years in the way we see funds do.

Edit to add;



in fairness Waverton looks the anomaly

There's no like for like replacement in the OEIC world, the only offering that has a similar return profile and approach really is JGGI. But again, no one cared about JGGI in 2018/19/20 - who knows if that will still be a good bet over the 10/20/30 year time horizon some people have....

One other consideration, we don't know whether the soft closing of the fund was driven by RLAM's compliance folks seeing an issue with liquidity or driven by the managers. Perhaps that decision to cap their AUM (and thus limit their earning potential) was taken above their head and is what has led to them deciding to exit....

Maybe they set up shop, gather loads of assets and their approach doesn't work. Or maybe they set up shop and deliver that 6%-7% outperformance year on year for the next 10 years. Really none of us know!

Definitely a bummer! Got my granddaughter in the Equity Select fund and doing well. I might have to take the simple buy and forget route and put her in one of the following or maybe all three? Vanguard FTSE Global All-Cap Index Fund ACC + HSBC FTSE Global All Cap + Fidelity World Index P. I will be watching this thread to see what others decide to do and when. As said previously, the existing Equity Select fund might continue to do well for quite sometime yet. The new managers would be foolish to change things immediately. Keep the comments and information flowing everyone. Thanks.

now find that with ii you need to phone to sell RLES. Will phone their 0345 number tomorrow but they don't seem to have a 'trading' number