Update: Citywire AAA-rated fund manager Matthew Tillett (pictured) is leaving Allianz Global Investors, prompting a second reshuffle in two years at Brunner (BUT ) investment trust.

Christian Schneider, deputy chief investment officer (CIO) for global growth, will become interim lead manager of the £438m trust for at least six months as AllianzGI looks to hire another senior fund manager to replace Tillett.

He will be supported by Marcus Morris-Eyton and Simon Gergel, CIO of UK equities and manager of Merchants (MRCH ) trust.

Schneider and Morris-Eyton had worked with Tillett since 2020 when he was promoted to run Brunner after the departure of Lucy Macdonald following a merger of AllianzGI’s global and European investment teams.

Tillett, who joined AllianzGI in 2006, earned his spurs on the £267m Allianz UK Listed Opportunities   fund, which he ran from 2013, earning a top Citywire performance rating earlier this year.

Richard Knight, deputy manager of the open-ended fund for the past two years, is promoted to its lead manager.

A spokeswoman for AllianzGI said there would be no changes to the investment process on either fund or trust. 

She said Tillett’s departure was unrelated to AllianzGI’s transfer of $101bn of US funds and assets to Voya Investment Management in New York, in which the group has taken a 24% stake.

AllianzGI was forced into the corporate reorganisation after US regulators fined the German group $1bn and ordered it to repay $5bn to investors in ‘Structured Alpha’ strategies that failed to protect them from losses in the 2020 pandemic crash.

However, it comes at a time of another significant change in the fund manager lineup with a new team running the popular £950m Allianz Technology Trust (ATT ) after the retirement of its longstanding fund manager Walter Price this month. 

‘Valuable’ Brunner contribution

The departure of Tillett, a graduate in economics and economic history from the University of Bristol, comes just three months after he took part in a Citywire virtual event to promote London-listed Brunner on which he had worked since 2010.

On a rising day for the UK stock market, Brunner shares slipped 1% to £10.15. Before today they had fallen 6.6%, broadly in line with the decline in the MSCI World index but well ahead of the 26% average decline in a sector that has seen a marked selloff in growth trusts, most notably Scottish Mortgage (SMT ).

At yesterday’s close Brunner shares stood nearly 10% below net asset value, in line with their one-year average discount. According to its fact sheet, over three years to 31 May the shares generated a total return, including quarterly dividends, of 39.1%. This was less than the 42.2% investment growth in the portfolio but ahead of its benchmark (a composite of 70% FTSE World ex-UK and 30% FTSE All-Share), which grew 37.2%.

Brunner chair Carolan Dobson thanked Tillett for his ‘steadfast and valuable contribution over his many years of working with the company’.

She said Brunner continued to withstand the turbulent market conditions due to its focus on quality growth companies bought at a reasonable price. ‘Performance is good in these conditions and Brunner’s total return NAV outperformed the total return benchmark by 0.8% in the first half of the current financial year.’

Dobson said the 2.1%-yielder was on track to deliver its 51st year of rising dividends, with ‘strong’ revenue reserves supporting a 6.7% uplift in this year’s payouts.