London Briefing: He's known as London's "Silent Assassin", respected and feared in equal measure. But to the 300,000 investors in Fidelity's Special Situations Fund, the unassuming Anthony Bolton is hero, guru and clairvoyant all rolled into one.

For more than a quarter of a century, Mr Bolton picked the stocks that turned his fund into the biggest and best-performing UK equity fund in the market.

Anyone lucky enough to have put £10,000 (€14,937) into Fidelity's Special Situations when it was launched in 1979 would now be sitting on an investment worth over £1 million. No wonder the publicity-shy fund manager, famed for his "contrarian" approach to stock-picking, has achieved legendary status among investors.

Along the way, he wielded enough power behind the scenes to earn his "Silent Assassin" sobriquet, such as blackballing Michael Green from the chairmanship of ITV during the Carlton merger with Granada in 2003.

But even legends cannot go on for ever and, ahead of Mr Bolton's retirement at the end of next year, the £6 billion fund has been split in two. Half of it - Global Special Situations - has just been handed over to a little-known fund manager, Jorma Korhonen.

The 40-year old Finn has worked at Fidelity for the past 10 years and was hand-picked by Mr Bolton as his successor. Despite that seal of approval, his appointment sent shock waves through London when it was announced earlier this year.

Now, little more than a week into his new job, Mr Korhonen's public pronouncements on his own stock-picking style have further unsettled some of Mr Bolton's many followers.

The Helsinki-born fund manager has made it clear that he intends to go his own way. While one of the investment methods favoured by his predecessor was to buy shares in companies that looked likely to be taken over, Mr Korhonen does not believe that takeover hopes alone are sufficient justification for a purchase.

Another difference between the two is Mr Korhonen's liking for companies poised to benefit from cyclical upturns in specific sectors. He is also thought to be much keener than Mr Bolton on technology companies.

A clear-out of the Bolton portfolio is also on the cards as the new fund manager shifts the main focus of the fund towards global stocks.

Assuming he is up to the job, the shake-up of the portfolio should benefit the new man, giving him a much greater range of companies in which to invest. One of the difficulties facing Mr Bolton before the fund was split was its sheer size, which made it increasingly difficult to find sufficient suitable companies to invest in, particularly as some of the most lucrative special situations are offered by small or mid-sized companies.

With Bolton due to step down from the other half of the fund in just over a year's time, thoughts are now turning to who his second successor might be. Some in the industry say that having already gone for one Fidelity man, perhaps the next candidate should come from outside.

All this uncertainty has, understandably, unnerved some Fidelity investors. As the small print always says, past performance is no guide to the future, even without such a dramatic change at the top.

Who can possibly tell what £10,000 invested in Korhonen's fund today will be worth in two, five or 10 years' time, let alone 25? It really all depends on whether the legendary Mr Bolton turns out to be as good at picking successors as he was at picking shares.

Second payoff for Alison Reed

Nice work if you can get it: Alison Reed looks set to collect around £700,000 (€1.04 million) when she quits as finance director of Standard Life next month, after little more than a year in the job.

It is the second bumper pay-off for Ms Reed, who collected more than £600,000 when she fell victim to Stuart Rose's axe at Marks & Spencer in early 2005.

Female directors are still a rarity at FTSE 100 companies and Ms Reed certainly did well to secure the role of finance chief at two of them. But an inability to communicate with London is said to have been her downfall at both M&S and Standard Life, although she is credited with sorting out the finance department at the Edinburgh-based insurance group ahead of its £4.7 billion stock market flotation two months ago.

The search for Ms Reed's successor is part of a far wider uncertainty over the shape of the boardroom at Standard Life, which publishes its interim figures today.

Chief executive Sandy Crombie is due to retire in two years' time and the race is already on to succeed him. Leading internal contenders include Trevor Matthews, who heads the UK life and pensions business and Keith Skeoch, who runs the fund management side. The new finance chief would also be a potential candidate.

Meanwhile, chairman Sir Brian Stewart, who is also chairman of the brewer Scottish & Newcastle, is expected to leave next year.

Such upheaval in the boardroom has unnerved investors, who are now hoping that Mr Crombie will decide to stay on beyond his 60th birthday in 2008.

London hates uncertainty more than anything else and some clarity today about the chief executive's retirement plans will be of far more interest to investors than the group's scheduled results.

Fiona Walsh writes for the Guardian newspaper in London