Barker was previously a director at Ballingal Investment Advisors for more than seven years, where he set up and ran the firm’s BIA Pacific Macro fund, which employs a long/short stock picking approach and had an average annualised return of approximately 10.4% net (versus the MSCI World Index USD of 1.2%) under Barker’s stewardship.
However, performance was volatile, with the fund seeing strong returns in 2008, weaker returns in 2009, but then producing a more consistent performance in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Barker left the fund in August.
City Financial has been active in Asia since 2010 from which time it has managed assets on behalf of UK institutional investors. City Financial has recently seen a flurry of activity that has included the departure of head of asset management Ed Rosengarten and a restructuring of its multi-asset range under Mark Harris.
The group announced that it would be merging the £12m City Financial MultiManager Income fund and the £23m City Financial Global Multi-Strategy fund in September. The group also renamed Graham Glass’s £90m City Financial Strategic Global Bond fund as the City Financial Defensive Global Bond fund to reflect its new lower volatility target.
