UK

Threadneedle is preparing to soft-close Philip Dicken's £1bn Pan-European Smaller Companies fund, Investment Week understands.

PROPERTY

Marlborough's top-performing fund manager Giles Hargreave has admitted it will be difficult for UK small-cap equities to replicate their 2012 performance this year.

EQUITY MARKETS

Premier is planning to merge Chris White's £30m Premier UK Alpha Income fund into Chris Wright's £10m Premier European Optimum Income fund, which is undergoing a change in investment strategy.

The UK economy never experienced a 'double-dip' recession, if offshore oil figures are stripped out of the data, said Henderson Global Investors' economist Simon Ward.

Jupiter has been tipped as a likely winner in the asset manager space as the gap between those who receive advice and those who do not widens and pushes more consumers to self-invest.

Margaret Lawson has been snapping up "bombed out" UK retailers in her SVM UK Growth fund, as the survivors of the massacre on the high street emerge stronger and with less competition.

The UK should still be a AAA credit by current definitions as the risk of a default is virtually non-existent, Henderson's Simon Ward has said.

Yields on UK government debt were climbing early this morning following Moody's decision to downgrade the UK's credit rating to Aa1, but equity investors shrugged off the news to send markets higher.