Jupiter to keep £500m of flagship fund after manager’s exit
FTSE 250 asset manager Jupiter is set to keep nearly £500m of the funds run by the departing fund manager Ben Whitmore.
The move will be greeted as a boost to the large asset manager, which has been facing a wave of withdrawals from Whitmore’s Jupiter Global Value fund, after the stockpicker’s exit was announced at the start of the year.
Jupiter told the Financial Times: “The Jupiter Merlin team retains its full investment of £480m in the Jupiter Global Value… under new lead portfolio manager Brian McCormick.”
The fund sits in Jupiter’s Merlin range, which operates at a degree of separation from the wider group. And £480m represents just under half the amount it was invested in the Global Value fund, and it is not yet known where the remaining amount will be allocated.
The Merlin team, whose position as a ‘fund of funds’ means they invest in rival funds as well as other Jupiter funds, had been weighing up whether the money should follow Whitmore to his new company, Brickwood.
Their decision not to will be be a big relief to Jupiter, which has also been battling with a more general rise withdrawal numbers, up 80 per cent those of this time last year, which have been worsened by high profile departures such as Whitmore’s.
The star fund manager’s exit prompted Alliance Trust earlier this month on account of Whitmore’s exit.
This has all been accompanied by a general trend of investors moving away from ‘active’ individual stockpickers, in favour of cheaper ‘passive’ products that invest in all, or part of, an index. Meanwhile UK equity funds specifically have been hampered by the low valuations of UK-listed companies, which has led several investors to prefer global stocks, where returns have, in recent years, been higher.
Jupiter was approached for comment.