Jonathan Simon, portfolio manager of top-performing JPMorgan American (JAM ), has announced his retirement in early 2025, a blow to investors as his co-manager Timothy Parton hung up his boots only this month.

Felise Agranoff stepped up to take on the growth half of the mandate following Parton’s departure. JPMorgan will announce a value-style replacement for Simon in due course, a stock exchange notice said.

Simon (pictured) and Parton led the £1.8bn trust to index-smashing returns after it adopted a hybrid growth-and-value focus in 2019, replacing the behavioural finance focus under previous JPMorgan manager Garrett Fish, who stepped down following a persistent share price discount.  

Since establishing the new focus, shareholder returns of 134% are ahead of the benchmark S&P 500 index’s 107%, according to Morningstar data.

This puts the trust second in the Association of Investment Companies’ seven-strong North America sector, behind only Bill Ackman’s highly concentrated Pershing Square Holdings (PSH ). 

Top holdings include six of the Magnificent Seven stocks that have driven US indices this year, excluding only Elon Musk’s EV company Tesla, with Microsoft the largest position at 7.5% of assets, according to the latest factsheet. 

The shares inched up 0.3% to 963.4p in response to the news, a 1% premium to net asset value.