John Horseman, long seen as one of the City’s top stockpickers, has unexpectedly stepped down from the day-to-day running of the Horseman Capital Management hedge fund, which has lost 23 per cent of its value in the first ten months of the year.
Although the group’s main fund has made a compound annual return of more than 16 per cent since it was set up in 2001, even after this year’s losses, Mr Horseman said he felt it was time “to pass on the baton”. The fund is worth about $3.6 billion (£2.1 billion).
Mr Horseman, 51, will hand over the reins at the start of next year to Russell Clark, who runs the smaller Horseman Emerging Market Opportunities Fund.
In a letter to investors, Mr Horseman said that he had planned to continue for several years, but was stepping down “for personal reasons and also because of how I perceive the investment environment”.
His resignation came as traders at BlueCrest Capital, one of the City’s largest hedge funds, joined the exodus of high-earners out of London before the introduction of the 50 per cent top rate of income tax in April.
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About 50 of the traders, many of them multimillionaires, are expected to relocate to a new office that the hedge fund is planning to open in Geneva, where they would pay only about 25 per cent in tax and, in some cases, 10 per cent. Britain’s new top rate will apply to all those paid more than £150,000 a year.
BlueCrest will maintain its London headquarters overlooking Buckingham Palace and the bulk of its 300 staff in the capital.
WPP, the advertising giant headed by Sir Martin Sorrell; Shire, the drugs group behind the Adderall XR hyperactivity drug; and United Business Media, the events and publishing group, have all moved their tax domiciles out of the UK to Ireland.
McDonald’s is shifting its European headquarters from London to Geneva, while Regus, the world’s biggest provider of outsourced office space, has relocated its tax domicile to Luxembourg. Hiscox, one of the biggest art insurers, and Catlin, another insurer, have moved to Bermuda.
Brit Insurance, best known as the sponsor of the Oval cricket ground, confirmed yesterday that it would be quitting Britain for the Netherlands to “better align its corporate tax rate with those of its global peer group”.