IF you are one of the 9m people expecting an equity Isa statement in the next few weeks, you’ll probably feel poorer once you have opened it.

The average UK fund is down 10% and many of the most popular schemes - run by big name managers such as New Star’s Stephen Whittaker and Axa Framlington’s George Luckraft – have done even worse.

Whittaker’s UK growth fund is off 24% over the past year, while Luckraft’s UK equity income scheme has plunged by 20%.

Ben Yearsley of Hargreaves Lansdown, an adviser, said: “The 12-month numbers do look dire. Very few UK funds have made a positive return and some of the country’s biggest names have been caught short by the credit crunch.”

Even funds generally seen as safe havens in troubled times have failed to deliver, with Neil Woodford’s hugely popular £9 billion Invesco Perpetual High Income fund falling 9.5%.

However, industry analysts caution against making snap decisions. Yearsley said: “Lots of the big-name managers tend to take large bets against the market, which means that it is relatively easy for them to underperform over a 12-month period.

“Quality managers such as Woodford should not be written off just because they have had a poor year. I would advise waiting for at least 24 months of below-average performance before making a decision to drop one of their funds.”

One way to protect yourself is to invest regularly rather than in lump sums. That way, you can take advantage of “pound cost averaging”, whereby you get more units for your monthly payment when prices drop.

We asked some of the biggest fund managers what they were doing to try to halt the poor performances.

New Star

Investors who put their Isa cash with John Duffield’s outfit have had a terrible year, with several of his funds at the bottom of the performance tables.

Whittaker’s UK Growth fund and Patrick Evershed’s Select Opportunities are both in the bottom 10 in the UK All Companies sector with falls of 24% and 25% respectively, according to Morningstar, a data firm.

Meanwhile, New Star Higher Income, run by Toby Thompson, and Strategic Income are in the bottom 10 of the UK Equity Income sector, having fallen 20% and 24%.

New Star said: “Exposure to interest-sensitive stocks and an underweight position in mining has impacted relative performance in varying degrees across some of our UK funds. The funds are, however, run by extremely experienced fund managers with proven long-term track records and we remain confident they are now positioned to achieve strong relative outperformance.”

Duffield took steps to arrest New Star’s poor performance last week when he announced the hiring of Charles Deptford from Baring Asset Management and Trevor Green from Allianz RCM.

Duffield said: “I have made no secret that changes would be made to strengthen New Star’s UK equity desk and . . . I am in no doubt that their considerable experience and strong track records will benefit the UK team and our investors.”

However, Yearsley has his reservations. He said: “These appointments certainly help, but I would give them six months to bed down. Our biggest concern is Patrick Evershed, who has underperformed for several years, but now is not the time to pull out because when he flies, he really flies.”

Invesco Perpetual

Ed Burke, who manages Invesco Perpetual’s UK Growth fund, lost 19.7% of his scheme’s value over the past 12 months – largely because he backed banks, including Northern Rock.

Colleague Neil Woodford made the right call on banks, but he admitted that performance over the past year had still been “disappointing”.

He said that some sectors he had expected to do well this year had in fact deteriorated, including pharmaceuticals and telecoms. They are considered classic defensive sectors, but have been among the worst performers so far this year.

Woodford should, however, get a boost from the emerging bid battle for British Energy, which is one of his holdings. Woodford said: “I do not focus too much on short-term performance as anything below a year is really background noise as far as I am concerned. Short-term volatility in share prices should not dictate investment decisions.

“It’s been a weird first three months. Some sectors that I would have expected to perform well in an environment where expectations for the economy were deteriorating as quickly as they have, haven’t done well at all.

“Some of the weakest sectors in the market have been telcos and pharmaceuticals, for example, which you would expect to have done very well. They’ve been some of the worst performing sectors.”

Axa Framlington

George Luckraft, manager of the firm’s flagship Equity Income fund, suffered because his holdings in smaller companies were battered by the fall-out from the credit crisis.

He also expected the economy to strengthen, not weaken, at the beginning of 2008 and failed to spot the problems at Northern Rock before it was too late.

Jupiter

Income Trust manager Tony Nutt’s relatively large weighting in the mobile-phone firms served him badly, and many other traditionally high-yielding stocks underperformed, resulting in smaller dividends, as well as falling share prices.

He said: “We made a return of greater than ten times from our mining investment in Antofagasta. However, we chose to take these substantial profits in 2007 as valuations looked full. Our decision not to be momentum investors here has cost us performance in the short term.”

MARK BACON, who rides out peaks and troughs with ‘pound cost averaging’, has been investing in Jupiter Financial Opportunities for the past 10 years or so.

In 2006, Philip Gibbs, who runs the fund, was Citywire’s most consistently rated manager, but his scheme is down 8.1% in the past year.

Bacon, a bricklayer who lives in Cannington, Somerset, with wife Donna, 41, a teaching assistant, and children Abigail, eight, and Rosemary, seven, said: ‘I’m happy to keep the Financial Opportunities fund. No-one can get it right all the time.’

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