fund manager

A City professional whose job is to decide how fund money is invested.

Fund managers work for investment trusts, unit trusts and pension funds, and have considerable influence in the financial markets because of the weight of money behind them. If they decide to move funds out of a sector, or out of a company in a sector, their decision can affect the price of shares in a way that the decisions of private investors rarely do (except for the smallest stocks).

Deciding which assets (shares, bonds, gilts, cash) the fund should allocate its money to is known as asset allocation.

Some fund managers run active funds which aim to beat the market index by picking the best performing shares. Others run passive funds, which aim to match the performance of an index by tracking it. The management fees charged by active funds are higher than for passive funds because the fund manager has to do more work.