InvestmentsOct 11 2019

Jupiter assets hit by Darwall exit

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Jupiter assets hit by Darwall exit

The imminent exit of European equity manager Alexander Darwall was key to fund house Jupiter seeing outflows of £1.3bn in the three months to the end of September 2019.

The company saw £1bn of net mutual fund outflows during the quarter, of which £1.1bn of outflows were from its European Growth fund previously managed by Mr Darwall.

Mr Darwall ran two open-ended funds, an investment trust and segregated mandates for the company.

He stepped back from running £7.7bn in mutual fund money in April, and in July he expressed a desire to leave Jupiter and set up his own investment management firm. 

It was confirmed earlier this month he would leave Jupiter in mid-November and launch Devon Investment Management. The board of the £1bn Jupiter European investment trust confirmed they would remove the mandate from Jupiter and move it to Mr Darwall’s new company.

Jupiter’s total assets under management at the end of September were £45.1bn, £800m lower than in the three months previously, with positive market movements of £500m somewhat offsetting the outflows.

The company saw outflows of £11m from its investment trusts and £348m from its segregated mandates.

The company has seen successive quarters of net outflows, with its assets falling from £50.1bn in early 2018.

Jupiter's recently appointed chief executive Andrew Formica told FTAdviser in July that he intends to try to take investment trust’s away from US firms. He said many large US fund houses run investment trusts in the UK, but are not familiar with the products, and he believes this represents an opportunity.

He is a former chief executive of Henderson Global Investors, which merged with the US firm Janus in 2017, and which operates a range of investment trusts.

david.thorpe@ft.com