Graham Birch, head of BlackRock’s natural resources equity team in London, recently quit the firm to spend more time running his dairy farm in the southwest of England. The 49-year old Birch farms milk and grains at his 2,300 acres in Dorset. Having managed the long/short BlackRock Agriculture Fund, he’s presumably a dab hand.
Birch also ran the BGF World Gold Fund, a natural resources equity strategy, as well as BlackRock’s World Mining Trust and the BlackRock Natural Resources hedge fund. He took a sabbatical last March and had been due to rejoin the firm at the start of the year.
His farm produces three million liters (792,500 gallons) of milk a year and supplies the U.K.’s biggest milk and cheese producer, Dairy Crest Group.
Evy Hambro and Robin Batchelor have assumed Birch’s responsibilities as heads of BlackRock’s natural resources equity team, which manages $36.3 billion.
--Robert Murray