Jupiter has continued haemorrhaging cash in the third quarter following the departure of its heavyweight European fund manager Alexander Darwall (pictured), as others in the industry also struggle to hold onto client money.
The FTSE 250 asset manager revealed in its latest trading update it saw £1.3bn of net outflows in the three months to September, a massive jump from the £800m in redemptions recorded this time last year.
Assets under management stood at £45.1bn, down £800m from the previous quarter.
The majority of these outflows (£1.1bn) were from client money coming out of its European Growth Sicav previously run by Darwall. His departure was also responsible for most of Jupiter’s £1.1bn outflows during the first half of the year, with £600m coming out of the asset manager’s European equities products.
Jupiter caught analysts and commentators off guard when it announced in April that Darwall had decided to take a step back from running the Sicav and Jupiter European fund, which hold a combined £8bn in assets.
Later in July he announced he would be leaving Jupiter altogether to “fulfil a long-held ambition to launch a small investment management business,” taking the European Opportunities trust mandate with him.
Peel Hunt analyst Stuart Duncan said the fund group’s level of outflows was “disappointing” and predicted more challenging times ahead for the firm as it deals with the fallout of losing Darwall.
“Q3 has proven to be another challenging quarter for Jupiter, as outfows from the European Growth strategy amounted to £1.1bn. There is likely to be further outflows relating to the manager change, which overshadows the best quarter for gross inflows for some time.”
Trio of fund groups plagued by outflows
Jupiter was not the only asset manager to report outflows this week.
On Friday Miton revealed it lost £121m over the nine months to the end of September. Clients withdrew £39m from its equity and multi-asset funds and investment trusts in Q3 though this was down from £87m of redemptions the quarter before.
Fund groups Polar Capital and Premier also posted net outflows in their trading updates on Thursday. Polar Capital leaked £448m in the first six months of its financial year, while Premier saw outflows of £246m in the last quarter.
However Polar and Miton saw their AUM climb to £14.3bn and £4.6bn off the back of positive market movement and fund performance.
Premier’s total assets fell to £6.6bn during the period, down from £6.9bn the year before.
