In March, St James’s Place flagged Magellan’s performance as ‘amber’ or ‘subject to closer ongoing monitoring’, while its overall rating was deemed ‘green’ or ‘good value’, the report said, also noting that about 25 per cent of St James’ Place’s managers were flagged amber or red in 2020 and 2021 but none were replaced.
St James’s Place removed four fund managers on its global equity fund in November 20 including JO Hambro, owned by Pendal Group, as well as BlackRock, EdgePoint and Sands Capital. The move was partly driven by a push for responsible investing and net zero targets.
Earlier this week, Mr Douglass told investors that the fund had got China wrong, and defended the fund’s investment strategy in an online presentation to clients of advice group Stanford Brown, reported by Morningstar.
Asked about the outlook for 2022, he raised concerns about the Omicron variant.
“We’ve always been cautious around mutation risk but when we saw Delta and earlier ones, we weren’t overly concerned that they would lead to a major event. When we saw Omicron, even before we got any data, when we saw where the mutations were on the spike protein, with our scientific advisers, we thought this is potentially something really different. But the market thinks it’s watching the same movie as Delta,” he said.
“It is very likely this mutation would escape most of the vaccines and that’s what we’re seeing. The two-dose vaccines are almost completely useless protecting against infection from Omicron which means this is going to spread rapidly on a global basis.”
