Skandia Investment Group has added a new fund manager to its UK Strategic Best Ideas Fund, a long/short UCITS III multi-manager fund, awarding a mandate to Aviva Investors.

Aviva has been given an £8 million (around $12.6 million) mandate to help “further boost” the performance of the fund, SIG said in a statement. According to the firm, the multi-manager fund has outperformed the FTSE All Share Index by 10 per cent since its inception in September 2007.

The UKSBI Fund is currently managed by Paul Casson of Henderson, Richard Plackett and Mark Lyttleton of BlackRock, Tim Steer of Artemis, Phil Hardy of Polar Capital, Colin McLean of SVM and Ben Wallace of Gartmore. Henceforth, they will be joined by Julius Lipner of Aviva Investors. 

Lipner’s background includes the hedge fund and absolute returns sectors.

“The macro-economic outlook is still unclear. Investors' current general lack of appetite for equities means that there are many opportunities to exploit at a micro level and relative valuations are getting increasingly interesting. All this bodes well for fundamental long/short strategies,” said Lipner.

SIG is part of Skandia, which is owned by UK-listed Old Mutual Group.