Having made a concerted effort to embrace the opportunity in Europe, now with a team of three salesmen on the ground in Luxembourg – with Antonio Forte having joined James Beddall and Jonathan Hughes-Morgan in September.
Chief executive John Ions said: “For the last 18 months have been making a concerted effort to develop our European distribution as we have become increasingly aware of the opportunity.
While it is very early days – and first and foremost we have to grow our franchise and our brand and business in the UK – we are seeing greater demand for alternatives in Europe.”
Three funds are expected to power the growth in Europe: the Global Strategic Equity fund, run by Kristof Bulkai, Patrick Cadell and Hugo Rogers – recruited from BMO Global Asset Management in April; European Strategic Equity, run by James Inglis-Jones & Samantha Gleave; and Michael Mabbutt and Felix Martin’s Global Strategic Bond fund.
Ions said he was focused on Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, but was perhaps only identifying a small client base in each region.
“It might only be 20 or 30 buyers, we are not taking a broadbrush approach.”
In its half yearly report for the six months ended 30 September, Liontrust posted a 16% growth in pre-tax profits, now sitting at £5.9m.
AUM was £4.6bn, having received £110m of net inflows over the period.
Ions said he was confident in his ambitions to double assets under management to £10bn over five years, adding he could achieve at least half of that without adding to its existing product range or investment teams.
“With good products and competitive products, run using a good strong process where we just let the managers get on with it and are unencumbered by any house view – that is very attractive, not just to UK investors but internationally as well.”
Liontrust will pay an interim dividend of 3 pence per share on 17 December 2015, with share going ex-dividend on 19 November. This is a 50% increase on last year’s 2p per share.
