Changes made to Chelsea Selection & Global Income EasyISA as Neptune fund manager resigns

4th October 2016 – Following the announcement last week that James Hackman, manager of the Neptune US Income fund has resigned, the fund has been removed from the Chelsea Selection and will be replaced in the Global Income EasyISA by Guinness Global Equity Income.

Following the resignation, George Boyd-Bowman, who runs the Neptune Global Income fund and who was formerly assistant manager on US Income, has taken over as lead manager. The investment process and philosophy of the fund will remain unchanged.

Robin Milway has taken on the management of the Neptune US Opportunities fund, which James also ran.

A statement from Neptune said: "As a manager of a global equity income fund, George knows the US income market very well. A member of the team for over six years, George is a big talent and we have every faith he will carry on the good work James has done since taking over the fund in June 2014."

Commenting on the move, James Yardley, senior researcher at Chelsea, said: “James has really transformed this fund since he took it on in 2014 and it is a real shame that he is moving. As a result, we have taken the fund off the Chelsea Selection and replaced it in the Global Income EasyISA with Guinness Global Equity Income, which was a new entry in the Chelsea Selection last month.

“There are very few US equity income funds available and even fewer that we believe are good enough to warrant a place in our EasyISAs, so we have decided to replace the fund with a global equity income alternative instead. The Guinness fund has around 50% of its holdings in US companies and is run by two very smart investors who are have a background as physicists. The investment process is extremely solid, with the managers looking to invest in companies that are very good at creating shareholder value. The portfolio is very concentrated in around 35 companies and stocks are equally weighted, each representing 3% of the overall total.”