Jupiter Asset Management has confirmed the departure of Patrick Harrington, manager of its £94 million Jupiter Undervalued Assets fund and its £68 million Jupiter Monthly Income fund.

The firm said that Harrington had left to pursue other opportunities and that Steve Davies would take over management of the Undervalued Assets fund with immediate effect.

Richard Curling (pictured), who runs the Jupiter UK Smaller Companies fund, will replace Harrington as co-manager of the Monthly Income fund alongside Ariel Bezalel.

Curling will also take over as manager of the £105 million Jupiter Fund of Investment Trusts, which had been run by Harrington since 2010.

Davies has been at Jupiter since 2007, and has worked closely with Ian McVeigh as deputy manager of the UK Growth fund but this is the first time he has been lead manager of a fund.

Meera Patel, senior analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the Jupiter Undervalued Asset fund had performed poorly in recent years and that a change of management could bring about an improvement.

‘We have met Steve Davies on a number of occasions and felt he has been instrumental in identifying promising stock ideas for the UK Growth Fund, and for the UK equities team.’

She added that despite his lack of dedicated fund management experience, ‘his analytical background should be an advantage when it comes to picking stocks’.

The Jupiter Undervalued Assets fund is not currently on Hargreaves Lansdown’s Wealth 150 list of preferred funds.

Prior to joining Jupiter, Harrington was UK Equities fund manager at OLIM, and before that he was at Henderson Global Investors from 2001 to 2004, where he was responsible for the management of its UK Retail Equity Income funds.