Several fund managers including Fidelity International, Barclays Global Investors, F&C and Henderson Global Investors are reorganising their UK equity operations following poor returns and increasing competition from boutiques.

Investments boutiques such as Majedie, Mirabaud, Martin Currie and Artemis have picked up new UK equity mandates in the past year at the expense of the larger players. John Hastings, an investment consultant at Hymans Robertson, believes boutiques can be more aggressive about picking stocks from the FTSE All Share index because they are less constrained by benchmarks.