Jupiter Asset's Bonham Carter gives up fund

LONDON (Reuters) - Edward Bonham Carter, chief executive of Jupiter Asset Management, is to stop running his Undervalued Assets fund after threatening last year to hand over the role if performance did not improve.

New hire Patrick Harrington, who joined Jupiter last week, will take over management of the fund at the end of the month, Jupiter said in a note on Monday.

Bonham Carter, a well-known figure in the fund management industry, has beaten the market and rival funds since he began running the fund eight years ago, but in more recent years performance has flagged.

Over the past five years the 122 million-pound fund has fallen 12.2 percent, while the average peer fund is down 4.3 percent and the FTSE All-Share index has risen 2.4 percent.

The decision comes after Bonham Carter admitted in an interview at last year's Fund Forum industry conference in Barcelona that he would fire himself from his fund this year if the poor performance continued.

The move also highlights the difficult balancing act that chief executives of fund management companies can face if they continue to manage both assets and the company.

Last year Philip Richards stepped down as chief executive of hedge fund firm RAB Capital to focus on his funds. Firms such as Odey Asset Management and Polar Capital have also separated the role of CEO and investment manager.

Harrington has worked as an investment manager at OLIM Ltd's UK equity team for the past three years, and before that ran Henderson's UK Equity Income and UK Extra Income funds.

"Having attracted a fund manager of Patrick's calibre to Jupiter who has a similar investment philosophy to me, I feel that now is the right time to hand the portfolio over," Bonham Carter said.

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(Reporting by Laurence Fletcher; Editing by Rupert Winchester)