Ruffer eyes job cuts as ‘down year’ hits hard
Asset manager Ruffer is the latest in the embattled London market to cut jobs as cost pressures mount, reports suggest.
According to the Financial Times, the firm, which employs around 330 people, is reportedly lining up the dissolution of 20 positions, none of which are senior leadership.
It is headed by multimillionaire philanthropist Jonathan Ruffer, who founded the group in 1994 and previously served on the board of disgraced financier Crispin Odey’s firm, Odey Asset Management.
The company told the Financial Times that it had been “making changes needed to best serve existing and new clients in a fast-evolving industry landscape”.
Ruffer is grappling with a momentum swing after the company’s worst performance in a financial year in 2023 that included a 6.2 per cent decline on a net asset value total return basis, and a 10.6 per cent share price drop across the period.
In a recent note to investors, Ruffer said that the period marked a “down year” and that “too many of the things which were meant to go down went up, and a few – only a few – of the things that were meant to go up went down.”
The company, which counts around £22bn in assets under management, recently announced a £17m share buyback.
The eventual retirement of Ruffer himself, aged 72, forced the business to prepreemptively restructure its business last year.
The job cuts are the latest announced in a swathe of cost-cutting efforts across investment houses to try and remain agile in a tough economic environment.
The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, told staff in January that it was cutting 600 jobs due to the industry “changing faster than at any time” since the firm’s inception in 1988.
Fidelity International revealed last month it would be laying off 1,000 people globally, while Citigroup’s wealth division in London will reduce its workforce by 10 per cent.
Baillie Gifford, Mattioli Woods, Brooks Macdonald and IG Group are all also reportedly instituting layoffs and in total, it’s estimated that asset managers have cut around 2,000 jobs since the start of 2024.
Ruffer was approached for comment.