Bloomberg – Man Group Plc, the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund manager, said assets under management rose 4.5 percent in the last three months of 2007 as investors added money at the slowest pace in 15 months.
Man Group declined 3.8 percent in London trading after saying investors put $600 million into its funds, bringing assets to $71.7 billion. Sales of $4.2 billion in the last quarter were offset by $3.6 billion in redemptions, the London-based company said in a statement today. Fund performance added $1.5 billion to assets, and currency and other adjustments contributed $1 billion.
Peter Clarke, who took over as chief executive officer last April, delivered returns at Man Group’s flagship fund that outperformed peers. Still, individual investors put in money at a slower pace than pension funds, endowments and other institutions.
“It’s not been a great environment to sell,” said Jason Streets, head of research at Evolution Group Plc in London, who has a “buy” recommendation on the shares. “The noise has been quite negative, even though their fund performance has been positive. As the market settles down they have a very strong track record on which to be selling retail product.”
