Investors pull billions from Man Group funds

2nd Aug 2013 08:20

Man Group suffered massive redemptions in the first half, amid difficult market conditions and after a poor performance from its flagship fund.The asset manager said clients had pulled $11.5bn from its funds offsetting sales of $6.5bn and dragging funds under management down to $52bn at the end of June from $57bn at the end of 2012.It put the hefty redemptions down to fragile investor sentiment and the mixed investment performance of its products. Man Group's flagship fund AHL declined 6.8% in the three months to the end of June.Chief executive Manny Roman said: "A sustained improvement in investment performance, particularly from AHL remains the key prerequisite for an improvement in net flows."The company reported a first half statutory pre-tax profit of $122m compared with a loss of $163m last time when numbers were hit by one-off write downs. Roman cautioned: "Looking forward trading conditions remain tough and we do not see any improvement in the near-term outlook."But shares, which have slumped by a quarter in the last three months, had rallied 8% to 90.25p by 08:43 on Friday. TB