If my experience is anything to go by, few recent events in fund management have aroused as much interest as Anthony Bolton's decision to return to full-time investment management with a new China fund for Fidelity.

By doing so he seems to be breaking Jeremy Grantham's golden, and all too well evidenced, rule that the biggest dynamic shaping the fund management business is career risk (avoidance thereof).

Why on earth is such a celebrated stockpicker taking a chance with a new venture that could so readily backfire and jeopardise the remarkable reputation that he has spent 30 years acquiring?

After all, when Mr Bolton retired at the end of 2007, his track record was second to none. His Special Situations fund outperformed the FTSE All-Share index by an extraordinary 6 per cent per annum over a period of 28 years. The European fund he ran for 13 years until 2003 also beat its benchmark by a handsome margin.

Having timed his exit from fund management with impressive prescience, handing over his Special Situations fund just in time to avoid the savage 2007-09 bear market, it is certainly a high risk strategy to come out of retirement and launch a new fund whose mandate is to invest in what many believe to be an already overvalued emerging market on the other side of the world of which he has only limited knowledge and experience.

Mr Bolton speaks no Mandarin or Cantonese and by his own admission has always been terrible at foreign languages. He won't be learning the mother tongue of the country in which he will now be spending his time looking for investments.

By any stretch of the imagination, this is what Sir Humphrey of Yes Minister fame would have called a "brave decision".

David Fuller's view Good for Anthony Bolton who is obviously not ready for the quiet life. My guess, is that at a youthful 61, he probably believes that he is approaching his prime as an investment manager