The assets under management of Jupiter Fund Management fell 6.6% to £46.9 (€53.9 billion) in the first quarter of 2018 following a “challenging start” to the year which saw withdrawals of £1.3 billion.
The London-based firm said in a trading statement on Wednesday that it had suffered negative market returns across all channels and that £1.1 billion of the outflows came from its fixed income products.
Jupiter’s fixed income strategy was responsible for most of the company’s inflows in 2017 – which were up 400% on 2016.
The outflows in the three months to the end of March were particularly impacted by withdrawals from continental Europe and Asia and further exacerbated by the withdrawal of money from a segregated mandate by a long-standing institutional client.
The trading statement said that, during the quarter, clients had pulled £929 million from open-ended mutual funds, £306 million from segregated mandates and £15 million from investment trust.
The FTSE 250-listed firm, whose share price has fallen almost 25% so far this year, has recently become the target of short sellers amid concerns of continuing outflows. The short bets anticipate that Jupiter’s share price will continue to fall.
Chief executive Maarten Slendebroek said that, following a period of market turbulence and subdued demand, the change in the firm’s flow pattern was “not unexpected” and had been indicated in a trading update in February.
“The growth of assets sourced from international distribution partners has changed Jupiter’s flow profile to being less predictable in the short-term,” he said. “As a result, in future we expect to see continued growth but with higher quarterly differentiation.
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