You’re an equity fund manager at the top of your game, running one or more funds that are outshining your peers. But you’re so popular that the money pours in and inflates the size of your fund.

So now you have to deal with massive inflows or redemptions.

Running vast amounts of money is as tough as it gets. It’s hard to be a nimble buyer or seller when the orders come in, often forcing you to sell when you really want to be buying – or vice versa.

So applause, please as Citywire Amplify reveals the 10 elite managers who have the most assets under management (AUM) and the funds that made them members of our equities elite.

Removing double counting for co-managed funds, the managers run $275bn between them.

Does size matter?

While much ink has been spilled answering how fund AUM affects performance, academic research has no firm conclusions (stop me if you have heard this one before).

Existing research measures the relationship between fund size and performance indirectly using measures such as liquidity and economies of scale, making it difficult to draw conclusions.

For example, Robert Kelly of Mays Business School writes: ‘There is no formula for determining the point at which fund size will begin to hinder performance.’

Nevertheless, a study for the CFA Institute did find that greater fund size affects performance negatively, especially for less-liquid funds. This is because an increased inflow to funds with illiquid holdings increases trading costs and price pressure on stocks.

Small-cap managers know this only too well, in theory at least – when the money pours in, it can be hard to raise their holdings in thinly-traded stocks without driving up the prices.

In practice, managers of large small-cap funds did pretty well. The 11 funds in our elite list with more than $1bn had an average total return of 60% in the three years to March this year – just 2 percentage points below the 51 small-cap funds running less than $1bn.

So, of the 421 managers on Amplify’s elite list, here are the top 10 managers with the highest AUM. JP Morgan’s Felise Agranoff is in the top 10, managing over $30bn between four funds. The biggest, Growth Advantage, is $15.5bn.

Agranoff said that in illiquid categories such as small caps ‘bigger is not better’ meaning the manager puts a lot of work into capacity management.

‘I don’t think there is a magic number,’ Agranoff told Amplify. ‘It’s dependent on a variety of factors, as well as a market environment.’ That said, Growth Advantage is a multi-cap growth fund, meaning ‘we still have significant running room and capacity ahead.’

All total returns in the article are calculated over the three years ending 31 March 2022

Manager	Group	Funds managed*	AUM ($bn)**
Steven Wymer	Fidelity Investments	2	70.4
James Anderson	Baillie Gifford	2	54.9
Tom Coutts	Baillie Gifford	1	54.8
Simon Webber	Vanguard	1	54.8
Mark Finn	T Rowe Price	2	40.7
Felise Agranoff	JP Morgan AM	4	31.9
Vincent Montemaggiore	Fidelity Investments	3	24.7
Wilfred Chilangwa	Fidelity Investments	1	24.6
Sanjay Ayer	WCM Investment Management	3	23.7
Paul Russell Black	WCM Investment Management	2	23.1

Source: Citywire. *Managers may have other funds that did not meet the criteria of consistent risk-adjusted-performance. **Fund size as of 31 March 2022

Steven Wymer – Fidelity Investments 

Nine of the 421 elite managers are from Fidelity Investments, and three are in the top 10 by AUM. Steven Wymer ranks first, with $70.3bn. He was consistently rated AAA by Citywire for 17 months until January 2022 and still holds a AA rating. He manages two elite strategies: the Fidelity Growth Company fund, with a total return of 111.91%, and the Fidelity Series Growth Company fund, which returned 119.12%.

James Anderson – Baillie Gifford 

The man who might rank as the most famous name on the list, compiled using March data, has now retired. James Anderson, the outspoken voice of growth investing, managed $54.8bn in AUM, split between his employer Baillie Gifford and a subadvised mandate for Vanguard. Anderson was rated AAA by Citywire for 28 months until March and has now wound down to AA. He returned 83.6% in total for his home team’s International Concentrated Growth Equities fund and 51% for the Vanguard International Growth fund.

Investment trusts were not included in our calculations, so Anderson’s most famous vehicle, Scottish Mortgage does not factor into his total AUM here.

Tom Coutts – Baillie Gifford; Simon Webber – Schroders

Anderson’s Baillie Gifford colleague Tom Coutts and Simon Webber of Schroders also ran the same Vanguard fund. Both had long spells as AAA-rated managers but now stand at AA. Webber also manages the Hartford Schroders International Stock fund, worth $4bn with a total return of 44.7%.

Mark Finn – T Rowe Price

T Rowe Price has two managers on Amplify’s elite list. Mark Finn runs two elite funds: the TRP Value fund ($37bn) and the TRP Large-Cap Value fund ($3.6bn). Mark Finn has been consistently rated since March 2021, and he currently holds an A rating.

Felise Agranoff – JP Morgan Asset Management 

In past issues, Amplify revealed that JP Morgan has the highest number of managers on the equities elite list: 18. One of them is Felise Agranoff, who is also one of the 44 women on the list. She manages four elite funds amounting to $32bn in assets. The biggest and most impressive is her Growth Advantage fund ($15.5bn in assets/95.9% return) followed by three mid- and small-cap funds ranging between $2.9bn and $8.5bn in size and returning between 43% and 66.6%. Agranoff was consistently rated AAA by Citywire between November 2019 and April 2021, and currently holds an AA.

Vincent Motemaggiore – Fidelity Investments

Vincent Motemaggiore is the second elite manager from Fidelity, with $24.7bn AUM spread across three elite funds – the Fidelity Overseas fund, with a size of $9.6bn and a total return of 38.5%; the Fidelity Series Overseas fund, with $14.6bn; and the much smaller Fidelity Advisor Overseas fund. Montemaggiore is currently + rated by Citywire.

Wilfred Chilangwa – Fidelity Investments

The final manager of the Fidelity trio on the elite list is Wilfred Chilangwa, who holds an A rating. Chilangwa manages the Strategic Advisers Fidelity International fund, which returned 32.4% and is £24.7bn in size. The strategy invests in global equities ex-US. The fund is only available to clients enrolled in its Fidelity Wealth Services.

Sanjay Ayer and Paul Russell Black – WCM Investment Management

Three of the elite managers on the 421-strong list work at Laguna Beach-based WCM Investments, and two of them are in the top 10 for most AUM. Sanjay Ayer and Paul Russel Black co-manage the Focused International Growth fund, which has a size of $23bn and a total return of 53.9%, and the Quality Global Growth (Managed) fund, which is worth $102m.

Ayer also co-manages the WCM International Small Cap Growth fund, which returned 76.3% over the last three years ending March 2022 and is worth $637m, alongside Greg Ise, another elite manager. Ayer was rated AAA by Citywire for 36 continuous months between May 2019 and April 2022. He currently holds an AA rating, while Black is currently A-rated.