Schroder Investment Management (Singapore) has announced that one of its senior fund managers, Ng Soo Nam, will be leaving the firm. Soo Nam was the lead manager for the Schroder Singapore Trust and the Schroder Asian Growth Fund, and has been with Schroders for nearly a decade. He was most closely associated with the Schroder Singapore Trust, which was launched in February 1993. According to the fund house he's leaving to head the investment team of a foreign financial services firm setting up in Singapore.

His responsibilities will be taken over by the investment team at Schroder Investment Management (Singapore), led by Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Leong Wah Kheong. He has over 18 years investment experience at Schroders and will assume responsibility for the Schroder Asian Growth Fund as well as act as interim lead manager of the Schroder Singapore Trust. He had initially managed the Schroder Singapore Trust when it was launched. Wah Kheong will be assisted by Deputy CIO Robin Parbrook and a team of 16 Asian equity analysts and fund managers.

Both the Schroder Singapore Trust and the Schroder Asian Growth Fund are on the Fundsupermart Recommended list of funds (click here for the complete list). In an interview with Fundsupermart, CIO Leong Wah Kheong discusses Soo Nam's departure and what that entails for both funds.

Bharathi Rajan: Could you tell me more about Soo Nam's departure?

Leong Wah Kheong: He was presented an opportunity that he wanted to take up. He's joining a Korean financial services company called Mirae and they have decided to set up an Asian investment capability outside of Korea in Singapore. Soo Nam has been asked to build that up. He's tasked with choosing the people for the team, and then setting the investment process up. Opportunities like that don't come by frequently and I think that's why he wanted to do it. It's probably the challenge that he wanted, to build up the brand name and make it well known outside of Korea. For further details, I think it's really best to speak to Soo Nam.

BR: Soo Nam has been very closely associated with the Schroder Singapore Trust. What will happen to the fund now that he's leaving?

LWK: Given the amount of media coverage in the past, it's understandable that Soo Nam has become closely associated with the Schroder Singapore Trust. I can understand that some investors would be concerned about his departure. But I'd like to stress that there is a strong team approach in our investment process, and we have in total 16 fund managers and analysts working in the region. They will continue as before to support the Asian Growth Fund.

For the Singapore Trust we have a couple of analysts that did generate stock ideas for Soo Nam. Certainly, Soo Nam has his own investment style which he brought to the fund. But I am confident that as a team, we can continue to run this fund in line with the expectations of our clients.

I'm going to act as the interim fund manager until we have brought on board the new lead manager from within our investment team. So I am not in a position to reveal the changes that will occur under that person. But certainly in terms of investment philosophy, that won't change because it's a house philosophy. That approach is fundamentally based on research and on identifying good growth companies at the right price. We will still look for under researched growth stocks at attractive valuations.

BR: Some time back Soo Nam shifted from buying smaller companies to dividend yielding blue chips for the Schroder Singapore Trust. Will that strategy continue going forward?

LWK: Yes that will continue, because that is very much what we look for when we are investing in companies. We look for companies which have undervalued growth prospects, but are also in a position to reward share holders by issuing dividends.

BR: The performance of the Schroder Singapore Trust and the Asian Growth Fund under Soo Nam has slipped in the past year against its peers, although the 2-year and 3-year performance figures are still competitive (go to fund selector to view comparative performance of Asia ex-Japan and Singapore equity funds). Does this have anything to do with his departure?

LWK: No it doesn't. The reason that the performance was weaker for the Asian Growth Fund was because we took a a fairly positive view of technology sector in Asia, and that has under performed despite pretty good newsflow for the sector in the last few months of this year. So that has been a key drag on the performance of the fund.

It's a similar story for the Singapore fund. It was overweight IT stocks such as Venture and U-Tech, and those positions have contributed to the underperformance. But we do have confidence in these companies and we continue to think of them as longer term investments.

BR: Will you be adding to the existing investment team now that Soo Nam is leaving?

LWK: We have already added resources to this area in the last 12 months. We hired 2 small cap analysts, one is based in Hong Kong and another is based in Singapore. Both of them joined us at the beginning of this year. And with this current team we are confident that we have sufficient resources to support the fund manager for both the Schroder Singapore Trust and the Schroder Asian Growth Fund.