In the course of reviewing my own investments, I have just looked at the Jupiter Ecology fund which I rebought recently after a period when I had left it off my short list because of weak performance. A change of manager in early 2021 and a look at some of the holdings in the top 10 had prompted me to give it another run.
The new manager, Jon Wallace, is not known to me as a personality and so I thought I would see what I could find out about him, fitting in with my ongoing project on finding out about manager style. Jupiter has a long track record as an investor in environmentally positive businesses but their ‘old guard’ has now maybe retired and I wanted to get an idea of what the new manager was like.
Of course, he has a little biography published in the fund fact sheet and on the firm’s web site (and he has a very specifically suitable CV) but I wanted to hear him talk, so I looked for videos and found an interview he did with a TV channel I don’t know (ProActive -possibly internet only) about his investment trust – the Jupiter Green Trust.
He won’t necessary run an investmemt trust in the same way is his open ended (OEIC) fund but his answers over a few minutes to a couple of good open questions about how he and Jupiter work allowed me to get some idea of his competence and the way he looks at ESG issues, including what he has absorbed of Jupiter’s established culture as an ESG investor. Jupiter is known to run environmental investing as a major business theme and to have a whole long establised team dedicated to ecloogical issues.
I came away believing all is well and he is on top of his brief in detail (probably because his academic education is on topic), which together with an updated look at a few of the really interesting companies in the top 10 has left me more than comfortable owning this fund.
Of course, I am not recommending the fund to anyone (if that sort of investment interests you, please do your own research) because that is not my role, but I am reporting how I keep an eye on funds I already own, try to uprate my knowledge from time to time and gradually get a feel for what a manager is trying to deliver.
My conclusion to the Digging Deeeper article on manager style is still a work in progress and will be published soon!
