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Two floors apart, two entirely independent equity teams ply their trade at JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management.
Despite the merger of JP Morgan and Chase, owner of Fleming, the firm shows no inclination to bring its equity teams together. Clients, consultants and staff seem confused.
Will it be up or down for JP Morgan Fleming? By Helen Davidson.
Ascend to the fifth floor of JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management's new London offices and you will find the firm's equity managers, under the watchful eye of chief investment officer, Martin Porter. Go down to the third floor of the building and you will discover JP Morgan Fleming's equity managers, headed by Pablo Forero. Confused? Two floors, two equity teams, with two very different investment processes, operating under a single firm name.
While on the third floor Forero's team of former JP Morgan equity managers pursue their researchdriven, top-down quantitative process, up on the fifth floor Porter's crew of ex-Fleming fund managers follow a stock-picking, bottom-up approach.
Staff from the two sides are not encouraged to talk to each other. They don't share research or go on company visits together. The fixed income fund managers, headed by Richard Oswald, sit on the fourth floor, a buffer between the competing equity teams.
"We don't forbid them to talk to each other and we don't promote it," says Forero, an affable and friendly character who sounds slightly embarrassed talking about this subject. "We leave it to them."
Needless to say, however, the approach is not winning huge levels of support in the outside world. "It is not a good way to run an integrated global firm," says a headhunter who has poached staff from the merged firm. "You need one product. You've got to have one style, one methodology. Otherwise it's very difficult to convince the consultants that you know what you're talking about."
MERGER AFTERTHOUGHT
This uncomfortable divide in the firm's equity process is the most glaring evidence that asset management was merely an afterthought when William Harrison, chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan, pulled offthe record-breaking $33 billion purchase of JP Morgan in September last year.
Only six months earlier, Chase had paid $7.8 billion for UK firm Robert Fleming, the family-- owned investment bank...