Manager Research

Prudential recently announced some key changes to its investment team. The changes made include the following:

• Simon Kendall will be stepping back as a portfolio manager on the Prudential SA Equity Fund to focus on the resources sector. He has experience in this area as he manages a number of pure resources mandates for clients.
• Aadil Omar will step back as a portfolio manager on the Prudential Equity Fund to focus on his roles as Head of Equity Research and co-portfolio manager of the House View Equity portfolios.
• Following his move from Allan Gray, Leonard Kruger has now been named as a co-portfolio manager of the Prudential Balanced, Inflation Plus and House View Equity portfolios. He has also taken on additional portfolio management responsibilities on the Target Income Funds and various institutional multi-asset mandates. 
• Johny Lambridis relocated overseas in early 2020 and handed over his responsibilities as Head of Equity to Ross Biggs. He remained involved in the funds, however. He has now stepped back from all portfolio management responsibilities and is expected to fully transition out of his current role by mid-2021.

There have been no changes to the Dividend Maximiser Fund and the fund will continue to be managed by Ross Biggs and Kaitlin Byrne.

Below, we provide a diagram that shows the changes to the portfolio management teams across the various funds.

On the whole, we are positive on the changes. Prudential has spent the last year bolstering its resources and has managed to put in place a highly competent investment team. Leonard is an experienced portfolio manager that we feel will make valuable contributions to the Inflation Plus and Balanced funds, particularly through his asset allocation capabilities. While Simon’s transition into a resources focused role may yet add value to a range of different funds with resources exposure.

We have retained our ratings on the affected funds and while we are positive on the changes that have been made, we will need to see how they play out before we consider making a change to any of the ratings.

Our ratings on the various funds are as follows: