Odey Asset Management’s Alex Griffiths is stepping down as manager of its 99.4 million Japan fund to focus on his hedge fund mandate and to pave the way for the fund’s assistant manager Nick Sharp.
Griffiths will be staying on as head of Odey’s Japan team and manager of the 550 million Odey Japan and General hedge fund , which he has been managing since launch in 2000. He has managed the Japan fund since launch in 2003, when Sharp entered fund management as his assistant. Before that, Sharp worked as a Japan analyst for a year at Odey, after moving on from his role as an accountant with Deloitte & Touche. Along with Griffiths, he will be working alongside Daniel Carter, who joined from Baillie Gifford three months ago to fill his position as analyst.
“The Japan fund has always been seen as the long only version of the institutional fund anyway, and Alex thought that it was time to step aside and allow younger talent to come to the fore,” says a spokesman for Odey.
However Sharp does plan to reduce the number of stocks in the fund from 80 to 60 to make it more “punchy”. He plans to reduce the number of banks in the portfolio from 10 to six larger positions. The fund’s largest overweight position is in financials at 40% and he expects the weighting in regional banks within this to increase over time as the Japanese economy improves.
The Japan fund is one of three Oeics in Odey’s offering and sits alongside its flagship 305 million Continental European fund and 212 million Opus fund. It has outperformed its peers in the IMA Japan sector over one year and since launch, with returns since November 2003 to July 31, 2006 of 49% to the sector’s 37.6%.