F&C Asset Management said it is to decide on the future of its Edinburgh-based £5.6 billion investment trust business by May, as it reported a fall in underlying profits for last year.
F&C, which incorporates the former Edinburgh-based Ivory & Sime funds business, has been hit by investors withdrawing a net £7.2bn of assets over the past 12 months.
After succeeding in a boardroom coup last year, executive chairman Edward Bramson launched a strategic review that has already yielded plans to cut costs by £33.2 million by 2013 and a revamped institutional business focusing on areas such as fixed income.
Mr Bramson said: "The second phase of the strategic review, which will cover the growth strategies for our retail, wholesale, investment trust and real-estate businesses, is ongoing. We expect to conclude this work in May."
The investment trust business is now run by Charlie Porter, who joined F&C with the acquisition of his firm Thames River in 2010 and was recently appointed head of its retail and wholesale business.
F&C employs about 100 people in Edinburgh. Many of them work on the administration side of its investment trust business, although management of the portfolios is conducted from several locations. F&C cut around 100 jobs last year to take staff numbers to 765, much from outsourcing some London-based administration work. The company declined to say whether the ongoing review would yield more job cuts.
It said net revenues rose to £267m in the year to December 31, up from £243.2m, after it benefited from the first full year of fees earned by Thames River, as well as improved fund performance including in fixed income, where most of its institutional assets are invested. Analysts had forecast revenues would hit £273.5m.
Underlying operating profit dipped to £65.2m, from £67.2m in 2010. Investors reacted to the news by sending F&C's shares down 3.7p or 5.1% to 69.3p.
Chief executive Alain Grisay, who retires in May said there had been "extreme volatility" in global markets last year.
"Markets have begun to make headway in 2012," he added.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article