Skandia Investment Group has selected Henderson Global Investors to manage a mandate within its UK Strategic Best Ideas Fund.

The long/short UK equity mandate will be managed by Paul Casson, replacing Neil Pegrum who managed the mandate before his departure from Cazenove.

Casson joins the likes of Richard Plackett of BlackRock, Tim Steer of Artemis and Phil Hardy of Polar Capital in managing the fund.

Skandia UK Strategic Best Ideas is the first and only long/short equity multi-manager fund. It has outperformed the FTSE All Share Index by over 12 per cent since its launch in September 2007, placing it in the top quartile of the IMA UK All Companies sector.

Ryan Hughes, senior fund manager at Skandia Investment Group, says: “Paul Casson is an experienced long/short manager with proven alpha generation. His investment philosophy can best be described as pragmatic, with no real style or market cap bias and fundamentally rooted in capital preservation which is an approach highly suitable to UK Strategic Best Ideas.”

Casson adds: “Skandia Investment Group are among the early pioneers of equity long/short Ucits III funds. We are very pleased to be part of this product and fully expect it to grow strongly as investor awareness of the benefits of funds such as this increases. In a lower growth world the flexible nature of the fund and ability to capitalise on the short side can make a valuable contribution to client returns.”