The end is in sight for the wind-up of Gam’s £8.5bn absolute return bond fund range, previously run by star manager Tim Haywood (pictured), with the Swiss manager returning another 5% of assets from its frozen funds.
In a letter to clients posted to the company’s website on Wednesday the Swiss fund group said it will make a third payment to shareholders in the Cayman-domiciled ARBF funds today (Thursday).
The last payment it made to clients was at the beginning of October 2018. Gam said further assets will be liquidated to cash and returned to shareholders in the coming weeks.
Including the third tranche, 71% of the assets in the Cayman-based Gam Absolute Return Bond Master and Gam Unconstrained Bond funds and Australian feeder funds will have been returned to clients.
Between 89% and 92% of assets have been liquidated in the Luxembourg and Irish-domiciled Ucits versions of the funds as of 28 February 2019.
Gam group head of sales and distribution Tim Rainsford said in the letter to clients the liquidation process is “progressing as planned” and reiterated it was being done in such a way to ensure all shareholders were being treated fairly and receiving their proportionate share of the wind down proceeds.
Gam shocked the industry after announcing in July that one of its star managers, Haywood, had been suspended following an internal investigation. The group gated the nine funds in the ARBF range days later and eventually broke its silence on Haywood as criticism continued to mount. It agreed to liquidate the funds a few days later.
Haywood was sacked by the asset manager last week. He has since claimed he was unfairly dismissed and is being scapegoated by Gam.
