US. Tough markets hit active asset managers striving for turnarounds
Some active managers have none of the luck.
They shook up senior teams, swapped out their bosses and merged to build scale. But their efforts to overcome the yearslong erosion of assets and profit as investors shift from actively managed funds into cheaper, index-tracking products just took another blow.
The latest round of earnings reports offer a bruising read. Rising inflation, Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and fears of a looming recession have dented investment performance, prompting investors to yank yet more assets.
Abrdn saw its assets drop by £34 billion ($41.2 billion) to £508 billion, Janus Henderson Group’s declined by 17% to $299.7 billion, below the level they were in 2017 when the asset manager was created in a merger. Jupiter Fund Management lost 19% of theirs to manage just £48.8 billion.
Even BlackRock didn’t escape unscathed. The world’s biggest money manager, which saw assets exceed the $10 trillion threshold for the first time toward the end of last year, saw them drop to $8.5 trillion as of the end of June, the lowest in almost two years.
“Markets are reflecting investor anxiety as investors evaluate the potential impact of these pressures,” BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said during the firm’s earnings call last month.
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