Jupiter warns of additional outflows forward of star stockpicker’s exit | USAEMALL.com

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Jupiter said investors pulled £1.6bn from its value funds in just three months ahead of star manager Ben Whitmore’s departure, fuelling £5bn in outflows in the year to date, as it warned of further withdrawals to come.

The asset manager said on Friday that the net outflows from its value equities strategies, which focus on cheap or out-of-favour stocks, included £1.1bn from mandates run for institutions.

The withdrawals over the three months to the end of September come as Jupiter’s lead value manager Whitmore prepares to leave by the end of the month to run his own venture, called Brickwood Asset Management.

Jupiter cautioned that customers were likely to continue pulling out money, pointing to mandates run for institutions by the value desk. The company said that “most, if not all” of the £2.3bn left in those mandates “will be redeemed by year-end”.

The outflows from its value team in recent months leave those strategies with £4.9bn of assets under management — down from more than £10bn at the start of the year.

The group is now hoping that Alex Savvides, who arrived at Jupiter from JO Hambro Capital Management this week, will bring in more assets. Savvides will manage Jupiter’s UK Special Situations Fund, which was previously run by Whitmore.

Jupiter also recently poached a London-based team of fund managers from Origin, overseeing £800mn of global equities including emerging markets, to reduce its reliance on UK stocks.

Jupiter said its assets under management fell to £50.1bn, down from £52.6bn in March.

Its latest update comes as mid-sized asset managers across the industry continue to suffer from customer withdrawals. Recent outflows come as investors nervously await the Budget at the end of the month for clarity over taxes, including capital gains tax, which is incurred on the sale of assets.

Premier Miton, another fund manager, said on Friday it experienced £133mn of net outflows in its third quarter because of “uncertainty ahead of the Budget in the UK later this month”, which “appears to have dented investor sentiment more recently”.

Mike O’Shea, chief executive of Premier Miton, said: “it is to be hoped that once the full impact of the Budget, particularly on capital gains and pensions, is known, then investor confidence will return.”

The updates come after Liontrust’s chief executive John Ions said on Thursday that uncertainty over potential tax increases had knocked confidence and caused withdrawals from its funds.

Ions said that “speculation and uncertainty around changes to taxation and reliefs in the lead-up to the Budget . . . have impacted investor confidence and fund flows for the whole industry”.

Jupiter said that it generated net inflows excluding redemptions from the value team and the loss of its Chrysalis investment trust. Chrysalis and its managers Richard Watts and Nick Williamson split from the asset manager this year.