Man Group AUM falls as investors flee long-only strategies

Man Group's assets under management fell 11% to $104.2 billion for the quarter ended March 31, driven by the coronavirus impact on financial markets and investor redemptions.

Negative investment movements of $10.7 billion hit assets under management in the quarter, said a trading update Friday, as the firm's long-only strategies declined with equity markets.

For the same quarter in 2019 the firm saw a positive investment impact of $4.5 billion. Assets fell 7% for the year ended March 31, 2020.

The firm will proceed with the distribution of dividends and a share buyback as planned, CEO Luke Ellis said in the update.

A dividend of 5.1 pence a share for the year ended Dec. 31, announced Feb. 28, will be paid on May 15. The share buyback program was announced in October.

Net inflows were $500 million for the quarter, compared with $700 million of net outflows for the same quarter a year earlier. Total return and absolute return strategies recorded net inflows of $1.6 billion and $400 million, respectively. Inflows were partially offset by net outflows from long-only strategies and multimanager assets.

Foreign exchange and other movements lost the firm $3.3 billion in the quarter compared with a flat impact in the three months ended March 31, 2019.

For the three months ended March 31, the firm's alternatives strategies assets under management fell 2% to $70 billion, but assets were up 4.3% for the year. Net inflows into alternative strategies for the quarter were $1.6 billion.

Long-only strategies recorded a 25.9% drop in assets under management for the three months ended March 31, and fell 24% for the year, to $34.2 billion. These strategies suffered net outflows of $1.1 billion for the three-month period.

Negative foreign exchange impacts resulted in losses of $2.4 billion from long-only assets under management and of $900 million from alternative strategies.

"The health and wellbeing of our colleagues and the performance of our clients' assets are our foremost priorities in what has been an unprecedented and testing period for everyone. I am pleased to report that all parts of the firm have pulled together and have done an exceptional job, particularly our technology teams whose outstanding efforts meant we have been able to keep operating as usual despite everyone working remotely," Mr. Ellis said in the update.

"Given the extreme volatility in all markets," he said, "we are pleased to have outperformed peers on an asset weighted basis across the firm by 2.5% in the first quarter, and to see our absolute return strategies make gains for clients despite the large sell off seen."