Former Henderson SRI team joins WHEB Asset Management

The Henderson SRI team that was made redundant at the end of 2011 has been re-hired by WHEB Group, the London-based sustainability specialist investor.
WHEB’s asset management division has taken on former Henderson Head of SRI, George Latham, as well as portfolio manager Tim Dieppe and analysts Seb Beloe and Hyewon Kong to run its core global growth strategy, the IM WHEB Sustainability Fund, a long-only equities fund investing in companies providing solutions to sustainability challenges. The fund was launched in 2009 and is similar to Henderson’s ‘Industries of the Future’ fund, which was managed by Tim Dieppe between 2005 and 2011. Dieppe had been scheduled to leave Henderson at the end of March. At the end of last year, Henderson laid off its entire SRI team and switched its three global SRI funds – the £126m Global Care Growth, £95m Industries of the Future and £175m Global Care Managed – to mainstream equity teams. Henderson’s six-strong SRI team included My-Linh Ngo, former Associate Director of Research, who is on maternity break and Bridget Boulle, Henderson SRI analyst, who is understood not to be joining WHEB.
At the time of the redundancies, Responsible Investor reported that talks had potentially been taking place with an external manager to buy out the Henderson SRI business and hire the team: Link
The rehiring of the team by WHEB will see the former Henderson team work under Clare Brook, FoundingPartner of WHEB Asset Management (WHEB AM) and a former Director of SRI at Henderson. Brook led the successful NPI SRI team, which became the SRI team at Henderson at the turn of the century. Brook said: “We believe the arrival of the principal members of the ex-Henderson SRI team is transformational for the development of WHEB Asset Management. This team is highly regarded within the fund management industry and has a strong track record of investing in sustainability themes.”
George Latham, who becomes Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at WHEB AM, said: “We can see a huge opportunity in growing client demand for sustainability-oriented investment products. This has in part been created by several larger institutional fund managers reducing resources in this area just at the moment when these investment themes are becoming increasingly important in driving returns.” Dieppe becomes Partner and Fund Manager at WHEB AM, Seb Beloe is Partner and Head of Sustainability Research and Hyewon Kong is Senior Analyst.
The new hires bring the team at WHEB AM to nine, including Chairman, Geoff Hall, Clare Brook, Ted Franks, Partner and Associate Fund Manager, Ty Lee, Senior Analyst and Jade Summer, Investor Relations Manager.
Parent, WHEB Group, has three divisions: clean-tech private equity, European renewable energy infrastructure and the listed securities asset management business.