By Elliot Gulliver-Needham
Jupiter Fund Management saw significant outflows in the first quarter after the loss of a key fund manager and the separation of investment company Chrysalis.
The asset manager reported that its retail, wholesale and investment trust arm suffered a total of £800m of withdrawals in the first three months of the year.
This came entirely from the £820m Chrysalis investment trust leaving Jupiter’s control after the fund’s managers, Richard Watts and Nick Williamson, chose to leave the firm. The duo announced their decision to depart at the end of last year.
Meanwhile, Jupiter’s institutional arm also lost £800m in investor money, almost entirely due to strategies managed by Jupiter’s value team. Institutional clients pulled £700m from those strategies.
This pulled institutional assets under management down from £10bn to £9.5bn due to mediocre market performance throughout the quarter.
In total, £1.1bn was pulled from strategies managed by the value team, pushing down the amount managed by the team from £8.5bn to £7.5bn in just three months.
Despite these outflows, Jupiter reported a slight uptick in assets under management (AUM) as robust market returns offset outflows. At the end of the quarter, AUM totalled £52.6bn, up from £52.2bn at the end of last year.
After losing the Chrysalis team at the end of last year, Jupiter suffered another blow at the beginning of 2023 when star manager Ben Whitmore revealed he would be leaving to start his own boutique.
Whitemore managed about a fifth of Jupiter’s assets, and when he announced he was leaving, the stock plunged nearly 15 per cent in one day as the market reassessed the company’s long-term growth potential.
All British asset managers have seen strong outflows over the last year. In the last week alone, Brooks Macdonald has reported outflows of £300m, and Liontrust has revealed £1.2bn of withdrawals.
Investors have pulled money from Jupiter in four out of the last five quarters. Outflows amounted to £1.2bn in the last quarter of 2023 and £1bn in the quarter before that.
