The move aligns capabilities across regions under this newly-created role.

Canada-based Manulife Investment Management, the asset management arm of Manulife Financial Corporation, has named Charlie Dutton, an equity investment leader with experience in Asia, as chief investment officer (CIO) of global emerging market equities. He will oversee and align the firm’s Asia ex-Japan and emerging market equity capabilities, ensuring it uses local resources and insights across the organisation.

The firm said it has enhanced its equity organisation by using expertise across its Asia and emerging markets teams to improve its clients' investment experience.

“The closer alignment of the Asia equity team with the global emerging markets equity organisation formalises the long-standing sharing of ideas and insights between our Asia and our emerging markets equity teams. We believe this alignment will translate into improved research sharing and investment decision-making, and will enhance our ability to create custom-tailored solutions to meet client needs,” Colin Purdie, global chief investment officer, public markets, Manulife Investment Management, said.

Manulife Investment Management has operated in emerging markets for more than a century. It has a large equity team based in Asia with over 90 investment professionals located across 10 markets in the region. The combined emerging market equities organisation manages over $25 billion in assets under management across Asia and emerging markets equity strategies.

Dutton will spend a lot of time in Asia with the investment teams across the region in the coming months. He will still be based in London, working and communicating with the investment teams in London and across Asia to ensure effective connections between them, the firm said in a statement.

Dutton brings more than 27 years of investment experience to this role, including over 25 years of Asia equity investment experience with seven years in Hong Kong as well as South Africa and London. Prior to joining Manulife Investment Management’s emerging markets equity team earlier this year, he was a fund manager at Ninety One – part of the global quality capability team that managed assets across five strategies.

Before Ninety One, he was a founding partner at Coupland Cardiff, an Asian investment firm, where he spent 10 years managing Asian-focused equity funds. Prior to that, Dutton was based in Hong Kong where he served as director of Asia-Pacific research at JPMorgan and as a Hong Kong/China consumer analyst at JF Securities. He started his career at HSBC based in Hong Kong as a HK/China Analyst.

At the same time, Manulife Investment Management announced that Kathryn Langridge, senior managing director, senior portfolio manager, and head of emerging markets equity team, has decided to retire on 31 October 2025, after an investment career spanning over 40 years.  Ronald Chan, chief investment officer, Asia ex-Japan Equity, is also leaving Manulife Investment Management, the firm added.