RIT Capital Partners (RCP ), the underperforming Rothschild family backed investment trust, has appointed its first female chief executive.

Maggie Fanari, a senior managing director at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, a global fund manager with $247bn of assets, will succeed Francesco Goedhuis, chief executive of RIT’s subsidiary J Rothschild Capital Management (JRCM) in March.

Goedhuis is stepping down after 13 years at the company to become a senior adviser due to an illness in his family.

This is the second senior change at JRCM team in two months following the departure in November of chief investment officer Ron Tabbouche, who left to live with his family in Israel.

It is understood Goedhuis’ father has been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, requiring experimental clinical treatment. As the only other adult in the family, Goedhuis, 41, had asked to go part time. 

London-based Fanari is currently a non-executive on RIT’s board, which she joined in 2019 but will resign on taking up her new full-time job.

RIT said Fanari, who heads OTTP’s high conviction equities team, had long experience of leading successful teams investing in asset classes across the world and had been selected after an ‘extensive international search’ by recruiters at Russell Reynolds.

James Leigh-Pemberton, chair of RIT said: ‘We are delighted to appoint Maggie to the role of CEO of JRCM. The track record of the team she has led at OTPP has been outstanding. She knows RIT and JRCM well, and we look forward to working with her to deliver the exceptional long-term returns to our shareholders which have been the hallmark of RIT over the years.’

RIT’s board said it welcomed the fact Goedhuis would continue his relationship with the company and was grateful to him for his long service and ‘notable successes’ as CEO.

In addition to looking after RIT’s £3.5bn of investments, JRCM is also responsible for the day-to-day management of the group in London’s St James’s Place.

Although Goedhuis’ decision is not linked to RIT’s poor performance, it comes as the £2.7bn listed global multi-asset fund strives to improve returns after two years of investment losses. The shares dropped nearly 10% last year and the portfolio of public and private equities suffered a 13.5% slump in 2022. This has left the shares trailing rival defensive funds on a wide 23% discount to asset value.

Longer term performance has been better. Figures from the company show that in the 10 years to 30 November RIT generated a 108.2% total return, beating rival capital preservation closed-end funds Capital Gearing (CGT ), Ruffer (RICA ) and Personal Assets (PNL ) and other leading open-ended conservative balanced funds.

Fanari said she was delighted to join JRCM and looked forward to delivering ‘significant value’ for RIT shareholders. ‘Having been a director on the board over the past four years, I believe there is tremendous potential to further scale and grow the firm by building on its strong foundation of active management,’ she said in a statement.

A chartered accountant and CFA charterholder, Fanari started her career as an auditor at KPMG and previously worked in equity research at Scotia Capital. She also holds a BBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University.

Goedhuis joined the company in 2010 as the principal in the office of its founder, former chair and honorary president Lord Rothschild. Before that he worked in New York for the Economics Nobel Laureate Robert Merton and the former vice chair of JP Morgan Roberto Mendoza, commercialising academic theory into financial trades.