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They control billions of pounds for UK investors, wield influence over critical decisions in some of the biggest British company boardrooms and can even determine the outcome of takeovers.

But few outside of the City of London have heard of them.

They are the main managers of five of the top six largest mutual funds in the UK and together they hold £76.2bn in assets under management, including shares in some of the top listed companies, on behalf of their clients and have more than 100 years of combined investment experience.

Many of the groups they work for will be familiar. They include M&G Investments, which created the UK’s first unit trust in 1931, and Standard Life, the Scottish insurer.

BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment group with $4.5tn under management, has a fund among the 10 biggest, too. It is the exception that proves the rule on two counts, running the only fund among the 10 largest with a woman in charge and being the only index tracking, or passively managed, fund.

However, the names of the managers are little known. One of the few regularly featured in the press, Neil Woodford, no longer commands the power he once had.

Mr Woodford’s fund is a relative minnow compared with the biggest at M & G and Standard Life. Mr Woodford, who left Henley-based Invesco Perpetual and launched his own company this year, has £3.6bn under his control as part of his CF Woodford Equity Income fund.

This is just a fraction of the size of the £24.2bn M&G Optimal Income fund and the £22.6bn Standard Life Investments Global Absolute Return Strategy fund.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the coterie of top fund managers are mostly university-educated, middle-aged men who hail from London’s wealthier suburbs. Of the 10 biggest UK domiciled funds, only one is controlled by a woman.

UK’s biggest fund

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Richard Woolnough is arguably the most influential fund manager in the UK bond market.

Bespectacled and erudite, the 50-year-old investor runs the largest UK domiciled fund in the City of London for M&G Investments, managing £24.2bn for pensioners, savers and big institutions.

M&G Investments, with £253bn under management, is one of the oldest finance houses in London. It also boasts the fifth-biggest UK fund in the City and launched the first UK unit trust more than 80 years ago.

Mr Woolnough joined M&G in 2004. As well as the flagship M & G Optimal Income fund, he runs two smaller funds, the M&G Corporate Bond fund and the M&G Strategic Bond fund.

Friends say he is down-to-earth and clinical in his approach to investing. Born in Chesterfield, he graduated from the London School of Economics and started his career at Lloyds Merchant Bank in 1985.

He moved to Italian insurer Assicurazioni Generali two years later, where he started his career in bonds, and then went on to take up a position at SG Warburg. In 1995 he became a fund manager at Old Mutual.

The fund is flexible, allowing Mr Woolnough to invest in a range of fixed income assets from government, investment grade and high yield bonds.

The fund has produced a cumulative total return of 30.19 per cent over the past three years up to November 21, says Morningstar.

Mr Woolnough took home a £17.5m pay package in 2013, making him one of the City’s best paid executives that year.

The dominance of M&G is underlined by the fact they also run the UK’s fifth biggest fund, which is managed by Stuart Rhodes and has £9.4bn of assets under management.

UK’s second biggest fund

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Guy Stern graduated in the US and spent a large part of his career in America – but he is now one of the leading fund managers in the UK investment firmament.

His fund, the Standard Life Investments Global Absolute Return fund, is the second biggest domiciled in the UK with £22.6bn under management.

As head of multi-asset and macro investing, he is responsible for overseeing asset allocation of more than £107bn and has a place on the Standard Life board.

The absolute return fund is considered one of the pioneers of a relatively new way of investing for traditional active managers as it does not benchmark itself against an index and aims to deliver positive returns, regardless of whether markets rise or fall.

The fund has been a big buyer of European bank equity as a relative value trade against other banks and financial stocks on the view that these stocks are cheap and likely to appreciate.

The 54-year-old Mr Stern, with more than 30 years of experience in the business, only took his first job in London in 2006 at Credit Suisse Asset Management.

He joined Standard Life Investments, the asset management arm of Standard Life, in 2008. Before then, he worked in Frankfurt, Cologne, New York and New Jersey.

The fund has produced a cumulative total return of 23.5 per cent over the past three years up to November 21, says Morningstar.

UK’s third biggest fund

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Mark Barnett is the man with the most unenviable task in UK fund management. Taking over from Neil Woodford at Invesco Perpetual this year, he has had to fill a big pair of boots.

But the 43-year-old Mr Barnett, who runs the third-biggest UK investment fund with £12.3bn under management for the Henley-based group, has never been daunted by the task.

He worked with Mr Woodford for 18 years before the latter left to set up his own company in May this year and in many ways the two men are similar.

Like Mr Woodford, Mr Barnett is short, stocky and, until he weighs you up, taciturn.

When he took over from Mr Woodford at the start of the year, he said: “I am not new to this game or these funds. I have confidence going into the role. The spotlight will be greater on me and the amount of money I am managing is larger. But this is something I relish and I am confident I can be successful.”

He started his career at Mercury Asset Management in 1992 after graduating from Reading University. He joined Invesco in 1996 and helped run international funds as part of the same team as Mr Woodford and was given his first investment trust to manage in July 1999.

Over the past five years, he has outperformed Mr Woodford and now manages a lot more money than his old mentor.

Mr Barnett’s high income fund has big positions in British American Tobacco, AstraZeneca and Roche, highlighting the defensive nature of his portfolio, which concentrates on some of the biggest industrial and blue-chip stocks.

The fund has produced a cumulative total return of 58.46 per cent over the past three years up to November 21, says Morningstar.

UK’s fourth biggest fund

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Iain Stewart is a straight-talking Scotsman and cycling enthusiast, who controls £9.4bn for Newton, the investment arm of Bank of New York Mellon.

His real return fund, which invests in a range of assets from bonds, equities and derivatives, is the UK’s fourth biggest and one of the fastest growing. He had £1bn under management in 2008.

The fund has taken large bets in medium-dated US Treasury bonds and equities such as GlaxoSmithKline and Novartis, which he expects to perform well.

He says: “We own 60 per cent in equities that give us income, but that comes with risk. We offset that risk and reduce volatility with assets such as government bonds, derivatives for hedging and currency exposures.”

The 58-year-old fund manager is a believer in a methodical process of investing to achieve the best results, befitting his background as a scientist – he has a doctorate in fisheries science.

He is also a firm believer in exercise to help relieve tension and provide sparks of inspiration and says experience counts for a lot in fund management. “Cycling is a great way to relax and helps me think,” he says.

In the summer, he cycles up to 100 miles a week, often in the Kent countryside near his home, east of Tunbridge Wells. In the winter, he prefers to cycle in the gym and does about 50 to 70 miles a week.

The fund has produced a cumulative return of 14.81 per cent over the past three years up to November 21, says Morningstar.

UK’s sixth biggest fund

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Eleanor de Freitas and her fund are the odd ones out among the 10 biggest in the UK. She is the only woman manager and her fund is the only index tracker among the 10 largest.

Ms de Freitas is considered one of the bright stars at BlackRock, the US investment group and the world’s biggest manager of money. She graduated from Oxford with a masters degree in mathematics.

The fact that her £7.7bn fund is one of the biggest in the UK highlights the influence that BlackRock wields in the City of London.

Although the group does not break down how much money it controls in the UK, it has about $1.4tn or 31 per cent of its $4.5tn assets under management invested in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The BlackRock UK equity tracker is part of the group’s beta strategy team, which Ms de Freitas runs from the company’s London headquarters.

The fund has grown to £7.7bn from £2.2bn in September 2009, making it one of the group's fastest expanding. This reflects the popularity of passive or index funds over the past two years as they offer a cheaper alternative to actively managed rivals, while often outperforming them at the same time.

Ms de Freitas has her largest positions in the biggest stocks in the FTSE 100, which include HSBC, Royal Dutch Shell and BP.

The fund has produced a total cumulative return of 48.39 per cent over the past three years up to November 21, says Morningstar.