Brief: Fulcrum Asset Management, the multi-asset £5bn investment manager co-founded by former Goldman Sachs partners Gavyn Davies and Andrew Stevens, is reaping gains from riding the coronavirus-driven market turbulence. Fulcrum's flagship Diversified Absolute Return fund was up 7.5% until 20 April, according to a person familiar with the situation. While much of that gain came off the spike in volatility in March, Fulcrum CIO Suhail Shaikh told Financial News it capitalised on active "tailwind" hedging choices which included so-called dispersion strategies, or capitalising on differences in volatility between an index and index component stocks. The fund is also trading in gold and currencies.
Brief: Amundi, Europe's largest asset manager, said its assets under management dropped by more than 7% during the first three months of the year due to onset of volatile markets prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic. According to its 30 April first quarter results, assets under management at the Paris-headquartered fund manager fell to €1.53tn at the end of March, down from €1.65tn at the end of last year — a drop which Amundi attributed to “a significant negative market effect at the end of March”. Outflows were heaviest across Amundi's institutional and corporate clients, which pulled a net €15.4bn during the quarter in what chief executive Yves Perrier called “crisis-related outflows”. However, more than €12bn of new money coming from retail clients and Amundi’s joint ventures helped limit total net outflows across the group to €3.2bn between January and the end of March.
Brief: Stephen Lansdown is paring his stake in Hargreaves Lansdown Plc, the financial firm he co-founded with fellow British billionaire Peter Hargreaves, to support other investments and give him the flexibility to pursue new ones. “Markets are defying a little bit of gravity at the moment, so I thought if I could see the opportunity to take some off it the table I would -- to spread the risk,” Lansdown, 67, said in a phone interview, referring to the sharp rebound in equities from their March lows. “We’re not out of the woods yet and won’t be for a long time, and you need to keep your powder dry to support what you’ve got and to take advantage of opportunities. It’s all about positioning.” A Guernsey-based company that Lansdown controls sold 160 million pounds ($202 million) of shares of Hargreaves Lansdown in an accelerated offering through Barclays Plc, according to terms seen by Bloomberg. He has sold more than $550 million of stock over the past five years, leaving him with a 7% stake worth about $600 million.
Brief: Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) said on Thursday that 71% of shareholders voted to approve the bank’s executive pay packages, according to preliminary tallies. The vote, taken at the bank’s annual shareholder meeting, is significant, as it comes after the influential proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommended investors cast their votes against the pay of top bank leaders earlier this month. Early in the meeting, which was conducted by conference call online, bank director M. Michele Burns defended the board’s reasoning for executive compensation. The board awarded Chief Executive David Solomon $24.7 million for 2019, a 19.4% raise over his total 2018 pay.
Brief: The coronavirus pandemic has hit theCarlyle Grouphard. It reported a first-quarter net loss of $612 million, or $1.76 a share.Carlyle (ticker: CG) reported a profit of $137 million, or $1.18 diluted earnings per share, a year earlier.The Washington, D.C., firm said it posted a loss in revenue of $745.7 million for the period ended in March. In the first quarter of 2019, Carlyle reported nearly $1.1 billion in revenue.The global investment firm declared a quarterly dividend of 25 cents per share. Assets under management were $217 billion, a 3% drop from the fourth quarter and 2% decrease from the same period in 2019. Fee-earning AUM slid 1% to $158 billion, driven by a 6% drop in real assets, which include real estate and natural resources.
Brief: The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) is delaying the sale of $2bn in private-equity fund stakes after the outbreak of the deadly coronavirus. The sovereign wealth fund, which is estimated to have about $580bn under management, was in talks with several investors including money manager Ardian about selling chunks of the portfolio, according to people familiar with the discussions. The market turmoil triggered by the crisis made it difficult for them to agree on how much the stakes were worth, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. ADIA plans to restart the sales process in the second half of the year, one of the people said. Spokespeople for ADIA and Ardian declined to comment.