CRUX Asset Management, the active equity investment manager, has hired Baillie Gifford's Asia investment manager, Ewan Markson-Brown, to lead the firm's expansion into Asia with two new UCITs equity strategies.
He will work with CRUX to establish a new office in Edinburgh.
The appointment enable CRUX to launch two actively managed, long-term growth focused regional equity strategies in Q4 this year, the boutique asset manager revealed in a statement on 10 June.
Focused on Asia ex-Japan and China, the UCITS funds will seek to identify and exploit pricing inefficiencies in growth companies and capitalise on applying CRUX's regional active equity expertise to deliver strong investment returns from Asian equities.
The highly rated manager regularly outperformed the MSCI Asia Index ex-Japan and was responsible for managing the Baillie Gifford Pacific Fund, which ranked in the top decile for one, three and five-year performance in its sector.
Since 2014, he was also lead manager of the Pacific Horizon Investment Trust which over five years achieved a 374% return for investors.
Karen Zachary, chief executive at CRUX, said: "Ewan brings great experience as well as an exemplary track record of value creation for investors in Asian equities. With the scalable platform CRUX has built over the last five years, his appointment will enable us to expand into Asia with complementary strategies that fit seamlessly into our core active equity management approach.
She added: "Built on a commitment to fundamental research, an ethos of collaboration and a track record of outperformance across equity benchmarks, CRUX's teams have the investment tools and experience to further diversify into new regions and broaden our investor base. We look forward to continuing to deliver the scale of performance that can only be achieved by active management with aligned investment aims to our clients globally."
CRUX will be hiring an investment team to support Ewan on the new strategies including two analysts covering Greater China/South East Asia and India.
Ewan has spent over 20 years managing Emerging Markets and Asia portfolios. He also co-managed the Baillie Gifford Emerging Markets All Cap Fund.
In March 2021, CRUX announced the appointment of Ashley Dale as director of international sales, who previously managed distribution at Asia specialists, Mirae Asset, Harvest and CLSA.
With £1.7bn AUM, CRUX is focused exclusively on active equity investing. Its teams across Europe, UK and Asia deliver bottom-up, high-conviction stock selection using proven valuation methodologies and intimate knowledge of long-term capital growth opportunities in specific geographies.
