Schroders giant value equities department has hit the headlines in recent years for a number of high-profile staff departures, but Simon Adler, the new person to head the team, said his aim is to make the department, “the best place to work, to invest and to communicate.”
Adler’s department, which presently has assets under management of £12.8bn across a range of UK and global funds, was run for many years by Kevin Murphy and Nick Kirrage.
However, both have since left with Murphy’s departure in June 2024, and the Kirrage’s — as exclusively revealed by FT Adviser — in July 2025.
Adler worked as a fund manager under the duo and is now head of the team.
“The first priority was to ensure that we had continuity of investment process, and then I wanted to make changes to ensure we are the best,” he told FT Adviser.
Among his earliest initiatives was to organise social events for the colleagues in his team, but also for people within other departments of Schroders that “help us and work with us, we want to be more grateful.”
He has recently expanded the team with the recruitment of an investment director, Simon Corcoran
The investment director’s role is to be a first point of contact for clients and regulators, and to liaise within other departments within Schroders on behalf of the value team.
Another area of growth is an increase in product director coverage for the UK, Asia and the US, where individuals already employed by Schroders there, will have added responsibility for the value funds in those regions.
Adler said he gets “calls every day” from people who want to work on his team, and added that he doesn’t feel under pressure from Schroders to grow the assets he manages, as the client base already in the funds is large and stable.
In terms of communication, he said one of the key metrics for his team is to communicate better both internally and to the wider market.
With both Murphy and Kirrage now separately working on funds which compete with Schroders, Adler believes the key differentiator he has to enable him to attract and retain clients is data.
He said: “We employ a full-time data scientist now, just on the value team. He started with us three days a week, then last year it became four days a week, and now its five days.
“We have data on every trade we have done for a decade, that helps us to learn, and I think it is something no one else has, and it helps our performance now and into the future.”
Adler said he and his fund manager colleagues reject 90 per of the stock ideas that cross their desks.
Peter Toogood, who runs consultancy firm Fund Research Centre, said the Schroders value team has seen many high profile managers exit over the years, and always managed to continue to be successful because the investment process and discipline has remained the same throughout all of the personnel changes.
david.thorpe@ft.com
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