HEAD-TO-HEAD: Blackrock versus Janus Henderson

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MANAGER REVIEW

Blackrock fund manager Tony Kim has been running the strategy since June 2013 via a US vehicle, according to Meakin.

He took over the Luxembourg-domiciled fund in 2017 from Tom Callan, the former CIO of Blackrock’s global opportunities team, who left the firm.

Kim has built a small but growing team, consisting of four analysts. Reid Menge, a tech sector veteran, serves as Ki’s number two, and Jess Xu joined in 2017. Kim then hired two more analysts in 2019 to support his growing asset base, which has ballooned from under $2bn to $16bn over the past three years, Meakin said.

“The team’s size has shown to be appropriately sized to meet the needs of the strategy,” Meakin said. “The team isn’t divided up to specialisms, with Kim and the analysts acting as technology sector generalists,” he noted.

Meanwhile, Alison Porter was named co-manager of the Janus Henderson fund alongside previous lead manager Stuart O’Gorman in 2014, but the current management setup, which includes co-managers Graeme Clark and Richard Clode, started in September 2017, following O’Gorman’s departure, according to Meakin.

“So the track record under the current three-manager team structure is relatively short,” he said.

“However, the three co-managers average around 20 years of experience,” Meakin noted, adding that they are further supported by two analysts.

In contrast to the Blackrock team, the five-member team have specific sub-sector responsibilities, with a certain degree of overlap built in, he said.

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