UK – The HSBC Actuaries and Consultants’ annual survey of UK balanced pension fund managers reveals that Glasgow Investment Managers is the worst performing fund manager in the UK, with J P Morgan Fleming coming out top.

Glasgow produced a return of -28.2% in 2002, HSBC said. And it also rated worst over a three and five horizon. It returned -19.9% over three years and –6.2% over five years.

Glasgow was also the worst performer in the Russell/Mellon CAPS survey released earlier this week.

Best performer in the HSBC survey was J P Morgan Fleming, returning –13.50% over the year. Over a three-year period UBS was best, returning –6.0%. Over five years, Tilney was top, with a +1.5% return, HSBC said.

HSBC surveyed 40 discretionary balanced pooled pension funds and five consensus funds.

HSBC says the survey shows that pension funds should evaluate fund managers’ performance for consistency throughout a three-year period, to minimise the impact on performance of volatile markets.

“You want to find a manager who can ‘get it right’ in different market conditions,” said HSBC Actuaries’ senior investment consultant John Finch. “For example, J P Morgan Fleming has performed above the median 92% of the time on a quarter by quarter basis over the last three years, whereas, over five years the figure reduces to 65% of the time.”

“However, probably the greatest turnaround has been from Schroders, which over the last three years outperformed the average balanced fund 75% of the time, but during the previous two years beat the quarterly average only once.”

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