Brooks Macdonald founder Gumpel to lead income fund in twin launch

Brooks Macdonald Funds is adding two income products to its range of Dublin-domiciled funds, with founder Jon Gumpel to manage the new defensive income product.

The Defensive Capital and Income fund (DCIF) builds on Brooks Macdonald’s existing £100 million Defensive Capital strategy.

The fund will be run by Gumpel (pictured), a founder of Brooks Macdonald and Robin Eggar, using a similar defensive investment strategy while also targeting income.

Gumpel has worked in the industry since 1986 while Eggar has managed client portfolios and pension funds with a focus on defensive assets for 12 years.

Gumpel said: ‘DCIF offers risk-averse investors access to an attractive range of defensive assets including structured notes, preference shares and convertible loan notes.

‘The existing strategy has built a strong track record and with the income feature in the new fund we believe it will attract bond investors who want to reduce interest rate risk and combine fixed returns with equity upside.’

The firm has also launched the Global Equity Income fund for Toby Thompson, with the aim of delivering income and capital growth.

Thompson, who has over 20 years’ investment experience managing equity income, said: ‘This fund offers investors access to an attractive asset class; high quality, higher yielding equities have a long term record as a strong performing asset class and there is every reason to believe this will continue in the future.'