The Wellcome Trust, the UK’s biggest endowment fund with £23bn under management, cut its roster of equity managers from eleven to nine over the past 12 months after concluding two firms were not taking enough risks with its money.

Nick Moakes, the fund’s chief investment officer, said: “Although performance was an issue, the main problem was that they had stopped taking as much risk… sometimes performance issues can lead to managers not being willing to take enough risk.