F&C plots fund launches amid revival plans
F&C ASSET Management, the under-pressure funds house, plans to boost profits by setting up new investment trusts.
The firm, which has endured a turbulent 18 months including a boardroom coup, said it is looking at setting up new funds – the first of which could be an equities trust – as it shakes up its flagging retail business.
Yesterday the firm said it wanted to tackle “perceived corporate issues” following a strategic review by Edward Bramson, the activist investor who took the chairman’s role last year after a bitter boardroom battle.
The second part of Bramson’s review, focusing on the property, consumer and retail arms, also showed F&C plans to market multi-manager and multi-assets products directly to retail clients following regulatory changes which may boost the number of clients who choose to manage their own assets rather than use a financial adviser.
F&C is on track to meet planned cost cuts of £33.2m by the end of 2013. Two out of three key clients have also indicated they will retain the majority of their assets with the fund manager beyond the end of existing exclusivity periods.
Last week F&C posted a further £1.7bn of outflows for the first quarter, although total assets under management rose 1.7 per cent to £101.8bn after the rally at the end of March.
Analyst David McCann at Numis said F&C remained “cheap” compared to the rest of the sector but added: “It remains very hard to predict how earnings are going to look over the medium term.”