Liontrust problems began before stars quit
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Liontrust chief executive John Ions says the problems at the firm started before the departures of star fund managers Jeremy Lang and William Pattisson.
The pair resigned from Liontrust in January 2009. They ran £3bn of the £3.3bn of assets under management at December 31, 2008. Last month, Liontrust’s assets under management stood at £1.1bn.
Ions says: “The assets had fallen markedly from £5bn to £3bn when they were here and performance was not strong across their funds, which their successors Gary West and James Inglis-Jones have addressed. Their departure was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
Ions says Liontrust is looking at adding a long-only retail credit fund for its fixed-income team in the third quarter of the year. The fund will complement the Cayman Islands-domiciled long/short credit and the Luxemburg credit absolute return funds run by the fixed-income team who joined Liontrust from Ilex Asset Management in March 2009. He says: “The benefit is that there are so many strategies we can use from Simon Thorp and his team. We could even do an equity/credit mix.”
Ions says the firm is looking to add new teams to its stable despite the recent axing of the global equities team. Ions says: “We always have conversations with different teams at different houses and if we found one that fitted culturally and had the expertise and demand, we would look to add them.”
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