Capital Group Portfolio Manager Changes

Plan sponsors don’t need to take any immediate action as a result of this informational update.

Capital Group announced Portfolio Manager (PM) changes that which took effect on January 1, 2026 and impacted the Capital Group Global Equity Fund and US Equity Fund available on our core platform.

1. PM Dawid Justus departed from the Global Equity fund
2. PM Aline Avzaradel departed from the US Equity fund

The changes are a result of a periodic review of the organizational structure that occur approximately every seven years at Capital Group. According to the firm, these reviews look to enhance the breadth and depth of investment groups. This most recent strategic review resulted in the following changes:

1. Reduce the number of strategies managed by some PMs.
2. Streamline management of some strategies – primarily U.S. equities.
3. Some PMs and analysts will shift from their current investment unit to a different equity unit allowing for more collaboration.

Here is how these changes impact the funds:

Capital Group Global Equity Fund

Dawid Justus, a named PM on the strategy since 2020 left. Justus was involved on the strategy for eight years and had managed approximately 11% of the portfolio, in a growth-tilted style with a modest bias to Emerging Markets. His portion of assets will be redistributed primarily to PMs David Penner and Georgios Damtsas, who became named PMs on the strategy earlier this year.  This brings their respective portfolios to a size that is similar to that of the other PMs on the strategy. Justus’ departure comes shortly after the retirement of Jeremy Burge on July 1, 2025, which means ~27% of the strategy has undergone a change in PM over the course of 2025. There are now five named PMs on this strategy.

Capital Group US Equity Fund

Aline Avzaradel, a named PM on the strategy since 2022 left the strategy. Avzaradel was involved on the strategy for six years had managed roughly 6% of the portfolio. As part of the changes, the allocation to the Research Portfolio will drop from 21% to approximately 12.5% of strategy assets. In total, Capital Group will redistribute about 15% of the portfolio, with all seven remaining PMs in the strategy getting larger allocations.

Capital Group had announced two other PM changes to the U.S. Equity strategy in 2024 and 2025. Donald O’Neal retired at the end of 2024. O’Neal had managed approximately 7% of the fund’s assets. James Terrile retired on June 30, 2025. He managed 7% of the total fund assets. Overall, five PMs have departed from the strategy over the past five years, mostly due to retirements.  There are currently seven named PMs on the strategy.

Capital Group’s approach to managing portfolios features a number of PMs each managing a small portfolio. The PMs collectively manage 85 to 90% of the strategy and an analyst research portfolio comprises the rest. There is also a Principal Investment Office on each strategy that is responsible for cash management of the fund and for determining how components of the portfolio are distributed among the various PMs and the research group. 

GRS Investment Solutions team view

Capital Group’s multi-manager approach will likely reduce the key-person risk for each strategy and given the relatively small size of each PM’s assets, there should be no major change in performance or fund style. The changes seem consistent with how Capital Group manages funds in general. Overall, Sun Life has no immediate concerns and we will monitor the transition to gain more insights of the impact going forward.