Man funds up as client base sees recovery
MAN Group, the largest listed hedge fund manager in the world, said yesterday that assets under management had increased during the group’s fiscal second quarter, the first quarterly rise in a year.
The group saw funds under management reach around $43.8bn (£27.4bn), a 1.2 per cent rise on the $43.3bn seen at the end of June.
The trading update sent the firm’s shares up 7.5 per cent to 331.2p, despite warnings that first-half profit was likely to fall 55 per cent to $280m from $622m in the same period last year, due to falling fee income.
Chief executive Peter Clarke said he was upbeat about the company’s prospects as the global economic crisis begins to abate.
“Investor sentiment is continuing to improve across the industry, the performance outlook is healthy and the prospects for sustained industry inflows are very promising,” he said.
If Man can indeed deliver net inflows, it would be a marked turnaround from the six months to 31 September 2008, during which it saw a $4.6bn net outflow of institutional assets, as investors were spooked by the group’s exposure to convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff.
The group, which lost $360m on the scandal, said earlier this year that it had lost clients as a result of the affair.
But it said yesterday that while institutional sales were “muted” in the second quarter, it had seen redemptions decline from $3.6bn in the first quarter to $1.7bn in the second three months of the year.