Liontrust Asset Management is set to launch a new fund at the end of this month, after seeing “significant demand” from clients for alternative, international investments.
Its trading update, published today (22 April), revealed Liontrust is to launch a new Dublin-based Global Strategic Equity fund being launched, subject to appropriate regulatory approvals.
John Ions, chief executive at Liontrust, commented: “We are seeing significant demand for alternative investments from clients, particularly internationally, which is partly being driven by the current valuations of equity and bond markets.”
The fund management group has also hired a trio of long/short equity managers from F&C Asset Management to lead the new fund. Kristof Bulkai, Hugo Rogers and Patrick Cadell previously managed the long/short ‘directional opportunities’ and ‘water and agriculture’ funds at F&C.
Liontrust’s economic advantage team will also be strengthened in June with the recruitment of Victoria Bates as a fund manager. She will primarily work with Anthony Cross on researching, analysing and selecting small caps for the team’s funds.
Ms Bates is currently deputy head of corporate broking at FinnCap, having joined the company in December 2010.
Meanwhile, the independent fund management group’s results showed it recorded net inflows of £667m in the financial year, up from £381m during the previous period, pushing assets under management up 24 per cent to £4.5bn.
However, the trading update also recorded net outflows for the quarter to 31 March of £41m, up from net inflows of £16m at 1 April 2014. It explained that outflows over the quarter include lower fee margin redemptions of £95m from a two institutions type clients.
This came despite seven out of eight of the firm’s UK unit trusts being in the first quartile of their respective sectors since launch, or since the current managers took over the running of the funds.
Mr Ions said that they have made a number of moves over the last few months to ensure this growth can be maintained, including the further diversification of fund management capability and client base.
“We have also started to broaden our distribution capability internationally and have already begun attracting inflows from continental Europe,” he stated.
Mr Ions also noted that sales in the UK retail market during the first quarter of 2015 were impacted in part by the uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the general election, as he said the firm was “confident about the outlook” especially “given the strength of our long-term fund performance and the quality of our fund management teams”.
peter.walker@ft.com
