RWC Partners enjoyed bumper asset growth last year after winning £3.5bn worth of mandates from Neil Woodford and attracting healthy flows into its emerging markets strategies.
The fund group’s final results posted to Companies House on Wednesday show assets under management climbed 40% in 2019 from £11.2bn to £15.6bn. CEO Dan Mannix noted this was a “significant” improvement on last year where AUM showed little change, rising from $14.2bn to $14.3bn amid a tougher market environment particularly for emerging market strategies.
Half of the £4.4bn of assets added in 2019 came from market gains while the rest was from net new business.
Mannix listed highlights for the year as $1.5bn of inflows into RWC’s emerging markets and frontier team and a “significant further win from St James’s Place for our equity income team”.
The win in question is the £3.5bn SJP UK Equity mandate, previously run by Neil Woodford. SJP awarded the segregated mandate to RWC’s Nick Purves and Columbia Threadneedle’s Richard Colwell two days after the Woodford Equity Income fund suspended. Purves (pictured) also runs the SJP Equity Income mandate, which was placed on the wealth manager’s “watchlist” due to poor performance in its debut value for money assessment.
Since taking over for Woodford, SJP UK Equity has fallen 20.2% versus the FTSE All Share, down 11.2%.
See also: Segregated mandates fail to save SJP and Omnis from Woodford hit
RWC sees healthy revenue and profit growth
The positive flows into its emerging market and from Woodford’s former SJP mandates offset a challenging year for RWC’s value strategies run by its equity income team which includes Purves and Ian Lance.
“Growth-orientated approaches saw the benefit of both rising markets and a stylistic tailwind,” Mannix said.
Despite a wobble for its equity income strategies, strong asset growth across the business saw revenues and profits grow. Net income in 2019 rose to £82m from £79.9m the year prior, while profit before tax increased 5% to £12.5m.
Mannix said the fund group was focused on diversifying its revenue streams. Most of its assets have a long-only equity bias which “naturally, brings higher market sensitivity,” he said.
Since the reporting period, Purves and Lance have won the Temple Bar Investment trust mandate from Ninety One, following Alastair Mundy’s departure from the firm.
Additional assets have flowed in since BNY Mellon global equities star Nick Clay joined RWC earlier this year. In September, Clay announced he would be launching a similar strategy to his BNY Mellon Global Income fund for RWC.
