What are the Board Members responsibilities?

  • The Foreign & Colonial Board believes that the optimum basis for achieving good performance is a strong working partnership with its investment manager, F&C.  
  • The Board is responsible for corporate strategy, corporate governance, risk and control assessment, the overall investment policy of the Company, setting limits on gearing and asset allocation, monitoring investment performance and for approving marketing policy budgets.
  • The Board has the right to veto the appointment of sub-managers recommended by F&C 
  • It is also important to note that there are no cross-directorships, no cross-holdings and no conflicts of interest between the Trust and F&C.

What are the Fund Manager's responsibilities?

  • F&C, as Manager, retains overall responsibility for the entire portfolio, including asset allocation, gearing, stock selection and risk.  In the case of the regional portfolios, however, F&C have the flexibility to delegate their management to external third party managers when this seems likely to result in better performance. 
  • F&C also remains responsible for the overall risk management of the Company's assets, with the limits set and regularly monitored and reviewed by the Board. At the end of the day, F&C, as Manager, is responsible and accountable for delivering investment performance.

Clicking on the names below will take you to the respective biography: 

   Ask the chairman 

Ask the FCIT manager

Biography of Fund Manager

Biographies of Board of Directors

 
 
 
 

Jeremy Tigue

Appointed Fund Manager in 1997. He is responsible for overall portfolio management including private equity, for investment performance and other key areas such as marketing and investor relations of Foreign and Colonial Investment Trust. He joined F&C in 1981. He is a deputy chairman of the Association of Investment Companies and a non-executive director of Graphite Enterprise Trust PLC.

  
Simon Fraser*† (Chairman)  
 Elected to the Board in September 2009, appointed Chairman in May 2010 and is Chairman of the Nomination Committee. Simon is Chairman of Merchants Trust PLC and a non-executive director of Barclays PLC, Fidelity European Values PLC and Fidelity Japanese Values PLC. He spent his career at Fidelity International, where he held a number of positions, including Chief Investment Officer (CIO) from 1995 to 2005, President of Fidelity International’s European and UK Institutional business and latterly President of the Investment Solutions Group.  He stepped down from executive responsibilities at the end of 2008.    
     
Sir Roger Bone KCMG†  
Appointed to the Board on 6 March 2008.  He has been President of Boeing UK since 2005. Prior to that he served as British Ambassador to Brazil from 1999 to 2004 and to Sweden from 1995 to 1999.  He was an Assistant Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office between 1991 and 1995, head of the Economic Relations Department there from 1989 to 1991 and Political Counsellor at the British Embassy in Washington DC from 1985 to 1989.  He was a visiting fellow at Harvard University in 1984/85 and served as a private secretary to the Foreign Secretary between 1982 and 1984.   
     
Steven Burley *    
Appointed to the Board in January 2008.  He was Head of Pension Investments at Rio Tinto from 1982 until his retirement in March 2007. He is currently an adviser to the BAE Systems Pension Fund. He was an adviser to, and then a trustee of, the Central Board of Finance of the Church of England from 2002 to 2007.    
     
Maxwell Ward (Senior Independant Director)†    
Elected a Director in May 2000. He was a partner in Baillie Gifford & Co, the Edinburgh firm of fund managers, for 25 years and was manager of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust plc for 11 years. He is managing director of The Independent Investment Trust plc and a non-executive director of Scottish Equitable PLC.
   
Sir Michael Bunbury Bt KCVO *†    
 Appointed to the Board in March 1998 and is Chairman of the Audit and Management Engagement Committee. He joined the stockbroking firm, Buckmaster & Moore, in 1968 and moved to Smith & Williamson in 1974, where he was subsequently chairman and to which he is now a consultant. He was also chairman of Smith & Williamson Investment Management Ltd for seven years.  He has been advising private clients and families on quoted and unquoted investments and property portfolios for many years. He is chairman of JPMorgan Claverhouse Investment Trust plc and HarbourVest Global Private Equity Limited, and a director of Invesco Perpetual Select Trust plc.    
     
Sir David Clementi MA FCA MBA†    
Joined the Board in May 2008. He is Chairman of Kings Cross Central General Limited Partnership, the private company responsible for the major land development in the area around King's Cross Station and St Pancras Station. He was chairman of the Prudential plc from December 2002 until December 2008 and from 1997 to 2002 he was Deputy Govenor of the Bank of England and served as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee. From 1975 to 1997 he worked for the Kleinwort Benson Group, latterly as Chief Executive.    
     
Christopher Keljik *    
Appointed to the Board in September 2005. He is a chartered accountant and retired as a director of Standard Chartered plc in May 2005 after 29 years, during which time he held a number of senior positions working in London, Hong Kong, New York and Singapore in corporate finance, treasury and general management. Prior to his retirement, his responsibilities at Standard Chartered included its businesses in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, the UK and the Americas. He is also a non-executive director of Millennium & Copthorne Hotels plc and Henderson TR Pacific Investment Trust plc.    
   

* Members of the Audit and Management Engagement Committee
† Members of the Nomination Committee