Janus Capital Group Inc. is replacing Jason Yee as manager of the $1.59 billion Worldwide Fund after it dropped 44 percent in the past year.
Laurent Saltiel, manager of the firm’s Adviser International Equity Funds and Adviser International Forty Fund, will take over the Worldwide Fund on April 13, Janus spokesman James Aber said Wednesday in an interview.
Yee, 39, who worked for 13 years at Janus over two stints beginning in 1992, is leaving the Denver-based company “to pursue other opportunities,” Aber said.
The Worldwide Fund fell an annual average of 7 percent in the past five years under Yee, compared with an average 3.1 percent decline for similarly managed funds, according to data compiled by Morningstar Inc.
Among Yee’s worst bets last year were New York-based American International Group Inc., Washington-based Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac in McLean, Va. The insurer and two mortgage companies, all taken over by the U.S. government, fell more than 97 percent in 2008.
“The past 18 months was a period in which he could have shined, and he didn’t,” Karen Dolan, a fund analyst with Chicago-based Morningstar, said in an interview.
Dolan said Yee missed the 2008 rally in emerging markets and stuck too long with big financial companies.
He also owned Isleworth, U.K.-based British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc, whose U.S. shares fell 46 percent in the past year; Round Rock, Texas-based computer maker Dell Inc., down 53 percent; and Yahoo Inc., the Sunnyvale, Calif.- based Internet-search company, which lost 55 percent.
