Legg Mason Inc.’s Bill Miller named Sam Peters, a former Fidelity Investments fund manager who joined the firm in 2005, as his eventual successor to run the $4.35 billion Value Trust fund.

Peters will join Miller as co-manager later this year, the Baltimore-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. The 40-year-old Peters oversees the firm’s investment strategies that target midsize companies and manages the $1.25 billion Special Investment Trust.

“It’s good business management and good for investors to know there is some preparation in place for succession,” Burton Greenwald, an independent fund consultant based in Philadelphia, said in a telephone interview.

Miller, 61, famed for beating the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index for a record 15 straight years through 2005, trailed the U.S. market benchmark for the next three years, leading to investor redemptions. Value Trust bounced back in 2009, beating the index and returning 41 percent. It has lost 6.9 percent so far this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.