Perpetual swings the axe; Ashley Pittard, Thomas Rice to exit
Perpetual is shutting down two well-known funds – and parting ways with Pendal’s head of global equities, Ashley Pittard, as well as technology portfolio manager Thomas Rice, sources said.
Ashley Pittard in his BTIM days. Dominic Lorrimer
Pittard, who runs the $600 million odd Pendal Concentrated Global Share Fund, will hand over the assets to Barrow Hanley at end of October after which he and senior analyst Sue Scott will exit the business.
Pittard has been a global equities investor for more than 20 years, first at PM Capital and then as a key member or BT Investment Management’s team – which in 2018 became Pendal. His fund made 23.74 per cent in the year ending July, beating its benchmark’s 17.62 per cent return, but was marginally lower than the benchmark since inception.
His exit is a replay of 2020, when Perpetual said goodbye to its global equities portfolio manager Garry Lawrence after it bought Barrow Hanley. This year, Perpetual is trying to digest another big acquisition, Pendal.
The latest cuts sound more like a belt-tightening exercise from Perpetual to squeeze synergies from its recent acquisitions, rather than a performance-driven cull. Sources said the decision was made after an internal review of Perpetual’s Australian capabilities within global equities. Investors were being informed of the changes on Wednesday evening.
Also, on the chopping block, is Thomas Rice’s Global Innovation Fund, which has fielded plenty of media attention in the past few years as its returns swung from one extreme to the other.
The fund shot the lights out in the last financial year, returning 40 per cent in the 12 months after a horrid 2022 where it was down 48 per cent. In the end, the volatility left investors skittish and
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