Against a general background of the worst performance of shares in 30 years, everyone has been experiencing a tough time. Despite this, we have performed strongly and in the case of St James’s Place were one of the two best performing funds managers last year.”The portfolios managed by Mrs Horlick and her team were substantially restricted at the asset-allocation level by the client. Nonetheless, performance was strong at the stock-picking level, which is the job the team was tasked with. Mrs Horlick’s performance and record with SGAM speaks for itself, and both SGAM and Mrs Horlick are appalled at recent unfounded allegations that suggest anything other than a totally professional approach to her responsibilities.”The cult of the star may be media-driven, but the impact on performance can be real enough if things go wrong.

Charles Ansdell, of the adviser InterAlliance, said: “If everyone is following the star, the fund will have to sell up the assets in an open-ended fund to pay off the investors leaving, and those that remain will suffer poorer performance as a result. With closed-ended funds, such as investment trusts, you do not seem to see the same following of star fund managers as in unit trusts and OEICs (open-ended investment companies). This may be something to do with the marketing of the funds.”The biggest star defection of recent times was the move of Nigel Thomas and George Luckraft from ABN Amro to Framlington last year. The pair managed £1.3bn of funds, about 90 per cent of the total at ABN Amro Mr Ansdell called this “a classic example of stars leaving. All the discount brokers said investors should bail out and ABN Amro’s investment business virtually closed down.” It was effectively bought by Artemis and the funds were merged under one name.But to those who consider themselves serious students of performance, talk about stars is merely offensive.

Mark Harris, head of investment management at Edinburgh Portfolio, said: “I might be able to comment if there was a definition of a star fund manager. It is not an analytical term we would use as it is unquantifiable. What we look for is technical expertise in terms of assessment of stocks and its valuation characteristics.”Not everyone is negative about the star culture. The Citywire analytical group bases its fund assessment methodology on following managers rather than funds, and two years ago the former Jupiter boss, John Duffield, set up New Star – an entire fund management operation centred around hiring stars.

Mark Skinner, New Star’s retail managing director, points to performance in the top 25 per cent of their sector for all the funds with the exception of New Star UK Growth.Part of the problem is that to retain the services of star managers fund management groups offer them management positions as well as other institutional mandates on top of more money. But, ironically, in trying to keep hold of their stars, they put them in positions where their performance may wane, so they lose their star in any case.New Star believes people will only be successful by doing what they like to do, so its fund managers concentrate on just that. But some advisers are now keener to look at houses with a team-driven approach.Ryan Hughes, of the Bath-based adviser Chartwell Investment Management, highlighted Threadneedle as an example of a big house with no star names because of a team-driven approach. He also mentioned Massachusetts Financial Services (MFS) from Boston, Massachusetts, a recent UK entrant offering three funds, as the most extreme example of this approach.”They only name fund managers because it is a legal requirement, but in fact there is just a group of analysts who invest using a consensus approach,” said Mr Hughes “In general, we are wary of star fund managers. Clients get worried when managers leave.The star leaves and that leaves the fund looking mediocre.”But the acid test is performance. As our table shows, it may be hard to come to any firm conclusion on that criterion.