Manager Research

Foord announced that deputy-CIO, Daryll Owen, will retire from the business in 2021.

Daryll joined Foord in 2013 after retiring from his position as CIO of Nedgroup’s (ex-BoE) Private Clients business. The intention of his employment with Foord was to leverage off his experience to create operational (people and process management) capacity in the business around the time that they started resourcing their global investment capability based in Singapore. The position of deputy-CIO was created specifically for him to provide support to Dave Foord in that regard. While not originally part of the objective, Daryll was also given portfolio management responsibilities on the SA multi asset funds and later on the Equity fund.

The local investment team has been relatively stable over the last few years following a period of significant change to the named portfolio managers of the various funds. The local funds will continue to be managed by Dave, Nick Balkin and William Fraser on a multi-counsel basis (i.e. with each portfolio manager managing a slice of the fund) following Daryll’s departure, with Michael Townshend managing private client portfolios. The portfolio managers are supported by a team of five senior analysts with tenure at Foord between 5 and 10 years and another analyst with a tenure of 2 years. The overall investment team including the Singapore offices consists of 16 investment professionals.

Foord have known about Daryll’s plans since early 2019, and given his departure is only in 2021, there is ample time for a smooth handover of his responsibilities. While the team will lose an experienced resource, Foord believe they have adequate capacity on the local investment team. The position of deputy-CIO will therefore not be filled following Daryll’s retirement.

We have retained the ratings on the local funds as is: