The Times - UK (2020-10-17)

the times | Saturday October 17 2020 2GM 53

Business

Investors pulled just over £1 billion

from Merian Global Investors during

the third quarter following its

troublesome acquisition by Jupiter

Fund Management, according to the

latest update from the FTSE 250

investment manager.

Jupiter told shareholders yesterday

that its total funds under management

stood at £55.7 billion at the end of

September, boosted by the arrival of

£16.6 billion as a result of the deal to buy

Merian. The total was dragged back by

heavy customer withdrawals from

investment products under the Merian

brand, including its Global Equity Ab-

solute Return Fund and its so-called

“systematic” strategy.

When the deal was announced in

February Jupiter had hoped to reach

£65 billion in investment assets man-

aged for individual and institutional

customers but the market turbulence

caused by the coronavirus pandemic,

and scepticism among some customers,

has since pushed that level lower.

Jupiter was set up in 1985 by the

veteran fund manager John Duffield. It

listed in 2010 after being acquired by

management in a deal backed by

private equity and is a member of

London’s mid-cap index with a market

value of just over £1.3 billion. The

company has been led since last year by

Andrew Formica, 48. He led the take-

over of Merian, which came against the

backdrop of widespread consolidation

in the asset management sector.

Jupiter is a specialist in the active

management of portfolios and, like

others with a similar style, has been hit

by the rise of low-cost passive funds. It

said yesterday that it had completed the

operational integration of Merian at

the end of last month. Merian was

formed in 2018 when it was spun out of

the asset management arm of the

financial services group Old Mutual.

Jupiter, which before the acquisition

managed assets of £39.2 billion, said

that in total over the three months to

the end of September it had suffered net

investor outflows of £953 million. That

was balanced by market movements in

its favour worth £800 million. Jupiter’s

Finance chief

at Superdry

off after year

Tom Ball

Superdry’s chief finance officer has

stepped down with immediate effect

after little more than a year in the job.

Nick Gresham joined the clothing

brand in May last year after the return of

Julian Dunkerton, the company’s

founder, led to a mass exodus of senior

executives. “A search for a permanent

replacement will start while interim

arrangements are put in place,” the

retailer said in a statement yesterday.

Superdry, based in Cheltenham, was

founded by Mr Dunkerton and James

Holder in 2003. It employs 4,300 staff.

Mr Gresham, 49, was hired from

Wiggle, the online cycling retailer, after

Ed Barker handed in his notice follow-

ing Mr Dunkerton’s return. He oversaw

the refinancing of the company’s debt.

Mr Dunkerton, 55, said: “He has

played an important role in putting the

company in a stronger position than it

was before he joined and helped to steer

Superdry through the impact of the

Covid pandemic.” Superdry’s shares

rose ¼p, or 0.2 per cent, to 151½p.

Jupiter takes £1bn hit after Merian deal

customers put money into its mutual

funds but withdrew modest amounts

from the investment trusts it manages

and segregated mandates, where

customer money is kept separately

from other accounts.

Although the fund flows out of Jupi-

ter were substantial during the period,

they were markedly less than during

the fourth quarter of last year and the

first three months of this year, when

customers withdrew more than a net

£2 billion during each period.

Analysts at Shore Capital said that

they remained unconvinced by the

merits of Jupiter’s deal to buy Merian,

which they said left it doubly exposed to

the difficult retail investor market.

They noted that the terms of the take-

over had worked out because the struc-

ture meant that Jupiter’s recent falling

share price had reduced the cost. They

predicted that Jupiter would end the

year with assets of £57.7 billion.

Analysts at Jefferies said that they re-

mained cautious and noted that a sub-

stantial amount of the funds flowing in-

to Jupiter were into its Dynamic Bond

fund, which they saw as vulnerable to

wider macroeconomic changes.

Shares in Jupiter Fund Management,

which are down by over 40 per cent this

year, fell 7¾p, or 3.3 per cent, to 231p.

T

im Martin, the founder of

JD Wetherspoon, has been

dubbed Britain’s best-known

publican while the Good Pub

Guide named him one of its

“pub superheroes” (Dominic Walsh

writes). His cheap beers and value-

for-money breakfasts and curries

have made his hostelries the busiest

on the high street.

The cheap prices, together with Mr

Martin’s pro-Brexit rhetoric and his

assaults on issues from taxes to

corporate governance, have turned

the mullet-haired businessman into

something of a man of the people and

over the years he has appeared on

programmes such as Question Time,

Newsnight and even Desert Island

Discs. In the process he seems to have

adopted a role as the voice of the pub

industry, even though his views can

be off the wall and often seem to get

up the noses of his industry rivals.

He has had regular bar-room

brawls with Diageo over their

Guinness pricing, describing the

drinks group as “a bunch of morons”,

while Rooney Anand was a regular

verbal sparring partner during his 15

years as chief executive of Greene

King.

Jonathan Downey, a restaurateur

who set up the pressure group

Hospitality Union after the Covid

crisis struck, is no fan. “Unlike a lot of

people I don’t have any particular

issue with Tim Martin or

Wetherspoon,” he said. “I don’t hate

people just because their opinions

conflict with mine — and I admire

greatly the business he has built. But I

wish he wasn’t such a high-profile

‘representative’ of our industry

Beers and breakfasts have made the

pub chain a popular high street fixture

future at risk, warns Martin

and committed Brexiteer, said that hygiene policies could make pubs safer

Industry divided by free spirit

with a knack for picking fights

because he’s the hospitality equivalent

of an antivaxxer and does not reflect

in any way the young, modern,

diverse and dynamic industry we are.”

His ability to upset politicians

seems to have ratcheted up during the

pandemic. He recently advocated

Sweden’s approach to dealing with

coronavirus and criticised the UK’s

handling of it, deriding its “colossally

expensive ‘big brother’ approach”. He

had no qualms about calling out

Rachel Reeves, when she was

chairwoman of the Commons

business committee, refuting

allegations by the MP for Leeds West

that Wetherspoon had “refused to pay

its 40,000 employees” and “refused to

lockdown altogether”. Both

statements, he said, were “completely

untrue”.

The press, who have in the main

given him a fair hearing over the

years, have also been given a shoeing

by the Wetherspoon boss. This was

caused by media coverage of his

comments just after lockdown over

employee pay and the suggestion that

if some of his staff were offered a job

at a supermarket he would completely

understand if they accepted. Instead

of letting the issue pass he insisted on

sending legal letters to half of Fleet

Street demanding corrections for a

variety of minor points. Accusing

some journalists of applying “more

spin than a Shane Warne googly”, he

reproduced all such corrections in the

in-house customer magazine

Wetherspoon News and even inserted

some of them in stock exchange

statements.

More important, though, is how he

is regarded in the investment

community. Ignoring the raised

eyebrows over his rather relaxed

attire (such as the shorts he wore to a

City results presentation two years

ago) the denizens of the Square Mile

appear divided.

Tim Barrett, head of travel and

leisure research at Numis, noted that

the top brass at the pub group had

subscribed for only £300,000 of

shares in the £141 million equity raise,

equivalent to little more than 0.2 per

cent of the total raised. “The company

remains strong and the VAT cut on

food is helpful,” Mr Barrett said.

“However, investors were miffed by

the share placing, both the failure of

the chairman to participate in any

meaningful way and the lack of

liquidity headroom going into

lockdown.”

Alastair Reid, at Investec, was more

positive. “The path of recovery rarely

runs in a perfectly straight line and

new government restrictions will

continue to buffet JD Wetherspoon,”

he said. “However, the company is

well placed to ride out the storm and

the results demonstrate it is well-

positioned to capture a growing share

of demand as and when it returns.”

Profile

Man Group funds bounce back

Man Group, the listed

hedge fund, reported a

recovery in its markets

following heavy

withdrawals in the early

days of the pandemic

(Miles Costello writes).

Funds under

management rose by

4.4 per cent over the

three months to the end

of September to stand

at $113.1 billion, against

$108.3 billion at the end

of June.

The hedge fund said

that its performance

was boosted by a net

inflow of $1.7 billion into

its alternative strategies,

more than reversing the

withdrawals over the

previous six months.

It said that it had

benefited from positive

market movements

worth a similar amount,

plus a further $1.4 billion

of currency and other

fluctuations in its

favour.

Man Group was

founded as a sugar

trader in 1783 and is

now one of the world’s

largest hedge funds

with a position in the

FTSE 250 index and a

market value of more

than £1.7 billion.

The shares, which

plunged to near six-year

lows in March, rose

strongly in early trading

yesterday but by the

close in London they

were down ¼p, or

0.2 per cent, at 117p.

Miles Costello

GUY BELL/ALAMY