Martin Currie hires top US equity manager

Martin Currie has announced the appointment of manager Penny Kyle who will join the firm's North American equities team.

Kyle will work alongside the Scottish group's head of North American equities, Tom Walker (pictured), as co-manager on a number of its funds including its Martin Currie North American fund. This fund has underperformed the S&P 500 index in the US in recent years and was dropped as a Citywire Selection recommendation in January. 

Before joining the Edinburgh-based firm, Kyle worked for five years at the Kuwait Investment Office, the London-based branch of the country's $296 billion sovereign wealth fund, the Kuwait Investment Authority, as the institutional investors head of US equities.

Kyle has over 16 years' investment experience managing North American equities and also previously worked as Morley Funds Management's head of North American equities for three years where she established its investment philosophy for investing in the region.

This latest recruitment follows on from recent appointments to Martin Currie's research team, including Matthew Franklin who joined from Schroders as its global head of industrials and utilities research and Gavin MacGregor who joined from Credit Suisse as senior research analyst for healthcare.

David Forsyth will now move to the Martin Currie equity income team as a senior analyst to help support the team in an area where demand for the group's strategies is strong, the firm said, most notably the Global Equity Income fund.