A number of groups included on Europe’s list of largest asset managers have suffered sales hits over the past year, indicating how far choppy markets have taken their toll on the industry.
BlackRock, Deutsche Asset Management, JPMorgan, Fidelity, Schroders and Invesco - six of Europe’s top 10 largest fund providers - all suffered at the hands of chaotic market conditions this year.
According to Morningstar figures from April, the most recent month available, Standard Life saw the highest outflows of any fund manager, driven by €1.8bn (£1.4bn) leaving its European Equity Income fund.
The assets from the fund were transferred in April to form a separate mandate which will be managed independently as part of the Global Absolute Return Strategies (GARS) fund.
The shift led to the Equity Income fund shrinking in size to £1bn from £2.4bn.
Standard Life’s Luxembourg-domiciled GARS fund also saw outflows of €206m (£162m) during the month, Morningstar figures revealed.
Outflows from the £1.5bn M&G Optimal Income showed signs of slowing, falling to €419m (£327m) in April, from €451m (£351m) in March.
European investors continued to shun equity markets in April, after being shaken by the spike in volatility earlier this year.
For equity funds, April was the fourth consecutive month of outflows, with investors pulling €6.4bn (£5bn), despite returns from the sector being broadly positive. For the year to April, equities saw outflows of €28.7bn (£22.4bn).
Global emerging-markets equities was the most notable sector to buck the outflow trend, with inflows of €1.6bn (£1.3bn).
Fixed-income funds also saw a consecutive month of inflows, hitting €11.6bn (£9bn) in April, which Morningstar’s senior manager research analyst Matias Möttölä said breaks a year-long trend of outflows from the asset class.
This comes after the European Central Bank announced in March that it would start buying non-financial investment-grade bonds on top of government debt, asset-backed securities and covered bonds.
Investors also favoured funds with higher risk in April, such as those investing in high-yield and emerging-markets bonds.
Colin Low, chartered financial planner and managing director of Kingsfleet Wealth, said: “I suspect one of the main issues with SLI is the underperformance of the Global Absolute Return Strategy (GARS) fund - but this has been evident for the past three years, and the merging of the Ignis funds into the stable.
“Perhaps people liked the boutique approach that is now part of a large life company. We first moved out of GARS in the Taper Tantrum period as it just gave a correlated return to fixed income assets and that, increasingly, appears to be the case.”
katherine.denham@ft.com
