Four Capital Partners, the London-based equity fund management firm, has hired a team of managers focused on the global equities space, as it expands its proposition with new fund launches.

The new team is led by Colin McQueen who has been appointed head of the global team, and he is joined by senior fund managers Stephen Walker and Justin Maloney.

McQueen was latterly managing director and head of global value equities at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, and has also previously worked at UBS. Walker and Maloney, meanwhile, join the firm from Morgan Stanley Investment Management and Artefact Partners respectively.

The global team will operate independently, but interact a lot with the investment manager’s UK and European equity teams, operating with the same investment philosophy and approach, according to founding partner Derrick Dunne.

The team is already up and running, and has started working on its first segregated account – a $300 million portfolio managed for the Sanlam group.

Four is also planning the launch of a new global equities sub-fund of its existing OEIC, called the Four Active Global Equity Fund, which will be managed against the MSCI World Index. The emphasis will be heavily on bottom-up, company-level research and the fund will be high conviction on those opportunities where it sees value, according to the firm.

Also in the pipeline is a new European equities sub-fund on the existing OEIC, which will make the European team’s active strategy – which has been applied to a representative account of £136 million (around $214.4 million) since March – more widely available. The fund will typically hold between 40 and 60 stocks and will adhere to the basic UCITS III risk controls. Both funds are expected to be launched in the first quarter of next year.