Fund house Artemis has appointed merger and acquisition (M&A) advice firm Fenchurch Advisory Partners, but said the business is “absolutely not for sale, neither in part nor whole”.
Instead Fenchurch’s role will be to advise the company on its strategic growth options for the years ahead, the firm said.
Fenchurch Advisory is an investment bank and corporate finance house which specialises in working with financial services firms.
An Artemis representative confirmed the appointment of Fenchurch, telling FTAdviser: “As prudent ‘housekeeping’ we’ve engaged Fenchurch. But Artemis is absolutely not for sale, neither in part nor whole.”
Artemis is 60 per cent owned by US-based fund house Affiliated Managers Group (AMG), with the other 40 per cent owned by Artemis partners and staff.
The company is structured as a limited liability partnership, so is owned by members, rather than shareholders.
For the year to the end of 2020, Artemis distributed £66m to its members, with AMG receiving £48.3m of this.
Those numbers were lower than in the pre-pandemic year of 2019, when £78m was distributed to partners, with £58m going to AMG, all data according to companies house filings.
The company made a profit of £80m in 2020, compared with £102m the previous year.
There were 33 partners owning the 40 per cent of equity which is not owned by AMG at the end of 2020, including fund managers who run a significant proportion of the AUM, such as Adrian Frost and Jacob De Tusch Lec.
The company has sought to grow in recent years by acquiring fund management teams from rival fund houses, including taking a suite of fixed income managers from Kames in 2018, and in 2020, hiring the same firm’s sustainable investment team.
In 2021, the company's chief investment officer, Matthew Beesley, defected to Jupiter, and its veteran fixed income manager James Foster retired.
Paras Anand joined the firm as chief investment officer in 2022, having previously worked at Fidelity.
david.thorpe@ft.com
