Liontrust Asset Management has established a new global equity group and brought in a team from GAM Investments to lead it. Mark Hawtin, who headed up GAM’s global growth equity team and managed long-only and long/short strategies, will run the new division. He will be joined at Liontrust by three GAM colleagues: investment managers David Goodman and Kevin Kruczynski, and analyst Pieran Maru.
Hawtin and Goodman are bringing their GAM Star Alpha Technology fund with them to Liontrust and have been appointed sub-investment managers of the strategy until the portfolio officially changes hands.
Ewan Thompson, Tom Smith and Ruth Chambers, who currently manage emerging markets and Japanese equity funds at Liontrust, will move internally into Hawtin’s group. All three joined Liontrust when it acquired Neptune Investment Management in October 2019.
The new global equity team will manage the Liontrust Balanced fund and the Liontrust Global Alpha fund, along with other global and regional equity funds.
This move follows Liontrust’s attempt to buy GAM last year, which collapsed when shareholders rejected the deal.
Hawtin has 40 years of investment experience. Before joining GAM in 2008, he was a partner and portfolio manager at Marshall Wace Asset Management, running one of Europe’s largest technology, media and telecoms hedge funds.
Hawtin said: “We are really excited to have joined Liontrust as it is in the process of building a strong global equity platform. We look forward to extending the product offering at a time when the global equity opportunity is so great.
“My experience of running global funds at Marshall Wace and then GAM has allowed me to see markets through many different cycles. This knowledge will serve us well as we navigate a period marked by unprecedented levels of change caused by structural disruption as well as geopolitical uncertainty.”
Hawtin believes that, to succeed, companies must adapt their business models rapidly in response to threats that challenge the traditional world order. This dynamic should create opportunities for active managers due to the polarisation between the winners who adapt and the losers who do not, according to Liontrust.
GAM hired Paul Markham in February to replace Hawtin at the helm of its global growth equities and disruptive growth teams. He was previously head of global opportunities equities at Newton Investment Management.