The Lipper Fund Flash report showed sales of bond funds in Europe reached €30bn in October, their highest monthly total since the fund commentator started monitoring flows in 2002.
“While high-yield bonds and emerging market debt were again much in demand (€5bn and €4.8bn respectively, across different sub-sectors), the inflows to bond funds as a whole were the result of interest expanding across a wider range of sectors,” the report added.
Ten bond fund sectors witnessed inflows of more than €1bn each over the month.
Bond fund assets in the European asset management industry now stand at €1.7trn, accounting for 28.5% of the industry total. Equity funds, on the other hand, have seen their share fall from 41.1% to 34% over the last four years, with assets currently at €2trn.
Equity funds failed to maintain the revival in flows that was seen in September, with sales dropping from €4.7bn to €1.3bn. UK investors were the biggest drag on flows, pulling out €1.3bn after the previous month’s inflow of €470m.
“Despite this, it was interesting that European and Euroland equities were again in favour (although not the most popular sectors), with inflows of €950m from European investors,” the report said.
Lipper also revealed that four asset management groups gained net sales of more than €1bn during October – Pimco with €4.2bn; BlackRock with €3.3bn, some €2.2bn of which stemmed from exchange-traded funds; Axa with €2.9bn; and JP Morgan with €1.3bn.
