Alliance brings on board Fidelity performance and risk guru

Alliance Trust has hired Fidelity Worldwide Investments' Duncan Squire as head of performance and risk.

Reporting to the £2 billion trust's chief executive, Katherine Garrett-Cox, Squire will take responsibility for overseeing and developing the vehicle's investment performance and risk management model.

During his time at Fidelity, Squire  spent eight years serving in a variety roles including head of investment performance and risk, head of portfolio construction and risk and investment director.

Previous to Fidelity, Squire worked for UBS and Newton Investment Management in risk management and portfolio analysis.

Commenting on the appointment, Garrett-Cox (pictured) said: 'Duncan joins Alliance Trust at a very exciting time in its long history.

'His extensive knowledge and wealth of experience in analysing the risk and performance of multi-asset class portfolios will be essential as we work towards the further development of the trust.'

Over the course of 2012 Alliance Trust has unveiled a number of changes, including taking on an SRI business from Aviva and tasking Ilario di Bon, who also served at Fidelity, with re-focusing the vehicle back to its core allocations.

These changes have seen the global growth investment trust take on a greater bias towards its higher conviction best ideas.

Year-to-date it has delivered 22.21% growth in its net asset value (NAV) per ordinary share versus a gain of 19.31% in the FTSE World Index, a record vastly different to its five-numbers which saw the trust underperform its benchmark 10.34% versus 17.30%.