Cheeseman departs as Potter and Burdett take on F&C fund range

The F&C fund of funds range, previously managed by Dean Cheeseman, has been handed to Gary Potter and Robert Burdett.

Potter and Burdett's Thames River boutique was formally acquired by F&C earlier this year.

Cheeseman and his co-manager Oliver Sonnbichler will be leaving the firm by mutual consent once an orderly handover has been completed.

F&C will keep separate its suite of Lifestyle funds which will be run as a separate range by Paul Carne.

The full range that Potter and Burdett will now be managing is F&C Multi Manager Balanced,F&C Multi Manager Cautious, F&C Multi Manager Distribution and F&C Multi Manager Growth.

There will be significant duplication in the fund range between these funds and the Thames River equivalent which is likely to result in a raft of fund mergers.

Burdett said: 'In the three years since Gary and I launched Thames River Multi-Capital, we have grown the business substantially, with around 800 IFA firms investing in our funds. The combined entity will transform the scale of Thames River Multi-Capital and we are delighted that Paul Carne and Catherine Sauer are joining the team.'

While Potter and Burdett are generally thought to have the most established record of selling multi-manager funds to the retail market over the past year Cheeseman has actually outperformed. He has returned 19.1% on his balanced fund compared to the average manager return of 14.8%. In comparison Potter and Burdett have underperformed returning 11.69%. The pattern is born out over two years where Cheeseman is ranked 33rd in the sector to Potter and Burdett's 38th.