Responding to the announcement that Schroders’ Matthew Dobbs will be retiring from fund management in 2021, FundCalibre has put the Schroders Asian funds under review.
Darius McDermott, managing director of FundCalibre, said: “Matthew has obviously been instrumental in building an extremely successful Asian equity franchise for Schroders over more than two decades and his expertise will be a loss to the company and investors.
“However, Matthew’s departure has been well sign-posted and there is a long handover period, so we don’t feel there is a need for a snap decision at this time: Richard Sennitt has worked with Matthew for many years – the two managers acting as alternates on each other’s funds.
“Whilst we know Richard and the franchise very well, we will want to have a meeting to discuss the enhanced responsibilities, before deciding on the ratings for Schroder Asian Alpha Plus and Schroder Oriental Income.”
Ryan Hughes, head of active portfolios at AJ Bell, added that the company felt the Schroders’ team remained robust. “Managing these moves is difficult but importantly Schroders have flagged this early and put a clear succession plan in place utilising the strength of the team at Schroders with Richard Sennitt stepping up on Asian Alpha Plus, Asia Pacific IT and Oriental Income IT.
“We currently use all of these funds and trusts across our products and therefore we will be meeting with Richard and Matthew very soon to discuss the transition. While not pre-judging the outcome of these discussions, I see no need for existing investors to have any concerns given the strong team at Schroders and the clear and well flagged transition process.”
