Invesco retains two star rating

Invesco Australiaappears to have been given much needed breathing room by research groupMorningstardespite recording only a two star ranking and weathering a tumultuous past few months filled with high profile staff departures.

The two star ranking, worn by Invesco since December last year and confirmed by Morningstar in its latest report into the fund manager (released yesterday), labels the group a ‘poor quality’ investment manager.

But despite the relatively poor ranking, Morningstar says the group is already beginning to display enough improvement to suggest a more positive future for the group.

According to Morningstar, recent staffing changes at Invesco highlight the pressures on the group to maximise the benefits that should be associated with its purchase of County Investment Management in December 2000.

Earlier this month, Invesco experienced another major staff shake-up with the group’s head of sales, Tony McFadyen, being made redundant. McFadyen joined John Ntatsopoulos, John Mann, Lydia Paczynski and James Godfrey as a recent casualty from the group’s sales and marketing team. Invesco’s Australian equities portfolio manager Greg Chapman has also recently resigned from the group.

However, Morningstar says Invesco has begun to respond to the pressures put on it by the acquisition of County by starting to integrate rapidly the two very different product groups offered earlier by the former Invesco and County entities.

The group is also replacing its subcontracted international equities investment mangers, Alliance Capital and Gartmore, with its own Invesco Global teams - another positive, according to Morningstar.

The report also found that the recent pressures on Invesco Australia had been compounded by the performance of its parent group, Invesco Global, which lost nearly 10 per cent of its funds under management during 2001.

The Morningstar report says there will be more changes and further uncertainty at Invesco until the group’s restructuring and integration of County has been completed.