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Jupiter suffered £10.3bn of net outflows last year after one of the UK asset manager’s top stockpickers left and customers continued to withdraw their money from its actively-run funds.
The FTSE 250 company’s withdrawals snowballed from £2.2bn the previous year, after a large chunk was pulled in the final few months of 2024 just as Ben Whitmore, the group’s lead UK value fund manager, left the company.
The sharp increase in outflows were worse than analysts’ expectations of £8.4bn, and brought the fund group’s total assets under management down to £45.3bn — a 13 per cent reduction on the previous year.
Matthew Beesley, chief executive of Jupiter, said customers’ withdrawals were driven by the departure of Whitmore and his team, which prompted some £6.2bn of redemptions from their funds. Whitmore left to set up his own investment boutique, Brickwood, which he launched earlier this week, the FT revealed.
“Short-term outflows inevitably follow management changes, but we are confident this sets us up well for long-term growth,” Beesley said.
Whitmore managed about £10bn for Jupiter at his peak, which accounted at the time for a fifth of Jupiter’s assets. Beesley last year brought in Alex Savvides from JO Hambro Capital Management to replace Whitmore on his main UK value fund.
Beesley has taken other steps in an attempt to bolster the business, such as poaching an investment team from Origin in order to expand in global equities.
The fund group also listed an active exchange traded fund this month, in an attempt to attract customers by offering a bond fund strategy led by one of its managers in a lower-cost product.
Jupiter is one of a group of UK midsized asset managers that is grappling with high costs, regulatory pressures, and customer withdrawals as investors shift their money into cheaper index-tracking products.
https://www.ft.com/content/bfefd979-eec5-47ac-8f26-b9febee6dbd4
