CFS wholesale funds keep ratings despite executive departures

Research house van Eyk has decided to maintain its rating of two Australian share funds managed by Colonial First State (CFS) despite the departure of senior portfolio manager Martin Littler.

Littler resigned as CFS head of core strategy in February in order to have fewer day-to-day team management responsibilities and focus more on long-short strategy, van Eyk stated.

The most recent announcement follows a meeting last week in which CFS advised van Eyk that Littler would retire this month. As a result, van Eyk put the A-rated CFS Wholesale Australian Share - Core Fund and the B-rated Wholesale Australian Share Long Short - Core Fund on hold.

Van Eyk head of ratings Matthew Olsen said despite the appointment of Matthew Reynolds to the head of equities position, the research house would continue to monitor the manager.

"It will take some time to observe how successfully they can continue to manage the strategies without Mr Littler's input," Olsen said.

Meanwhile, the CFS-distributed Aspect Diversified Futures Fund - Class A will retain its Standard and Poor's (S&P) fund rating despite the resignation of Aspect Capital's chief investment officer, Gavin Ferris. Aspect director of research Martin Lueck will assume Ferris' responsibilities, S&P said.

"Aspect's trading systems have been established for an extended period of time, and Mr Ferris' departure is viewed as mainly affecting possible future research," said S&P Fund Services Michael Armitage.

"The team approach and the scale of resourcing within Aspect's research teams minimises the effect of Ferris' departure."