UK- UBS Global Asset Management has suffered the departure of two senior investment managers to Société Générale Asset Management, the fund manager co-founded by Nicola Horlick.

Hugh Sergeant, UBS’s head of UK equities, and Harinder Sandhu, head of UK specialist equities, have joined SG’s UK fund management team.

The departures have led to a reassessment of the retail launch. Sergeant and Sandhu were supposed to start running UBS’s first UK retail funds next month.

Following their departure, neither fund will launch on time although head of UK retail business Graham Hane has said that a planned offering of a pooled balanced fund will go ahead next month.

Andrew Maclaren, who has been with UBS for more than ten years, is taking over from Sergeant.

At SGAM the two will work primarily on institutional business but also on a retail fund that SGAM is planning. Both will report to chief executive Nicola Horlick.

Referring to the appointments, Horlick said: “we believe we have now established one of the strongest UK equity teams in the industry.”

Founded in 1998, SGAM now manages more than £8bn in assets.