Man Groups promotes CFO Sorell to co-president
Man Group has promoted chief financial officer Jonathan Sorrell to co-president of the listed hedge fund after he led its efforts to diversify its core quant and stockpicking strategies and lessen its reliance on single funds.
The 38-year-old former Goldman Sachs investment banker has been at the forefront of Man Group’s string of acquisitions over the past few years, which have included Numeric, a Boston-based quant fund, that added a sizeable presence in the US. About a quarter of the London-based company’s assets under management are now from America.
He will be responsible for further US expansion and developing the company’s private markets asset management business, which will include investing strategies that lock up capital for longer than Man Group’s hedge funds, such as private equity, real estate and infrastructure.
“Over the past five years, Jonathan has made a significant contribution through a period of transition and growth for the business,” said Manny Roman, Man Group chief executive, in an email to staff.
“During this time, we have restructured the firm, diversified our offering and expanded our global footprint. Jonathan’s role at the helm of these changes has far exceeded the demands and scope of a traditional CFO.”
While the company’s share price has fallen from about 178p a year ago to 133p now, it was trading at about 95p three years ago and has benefited from a restructuring led by Mr Roman, which reduced costs by $270m.
Following the group’s first-quarter results, Mr Roman said Man Group would continue to seek acquisitions.
Performance across a range of funds at AHL, Man Group’s core quant strategy, and GLG, its discretionary trading arm, have been mixed during a tough year for global hedge funds. Analysts have said that the company has become less reliant to a degree on AHL, where its share price was once closely correlated with its funds’ performance.
Man Group’s funds under management rose 38 per cent to $78.7bn from 2012 to last year. Most of that is down to acquisitions, which added $22.2bn in assets between May 2014 and January 2015. Close to half is in quant strategies.
The company, which offered almost solely hedge fund strategies in 2010, has spent the past few years adding more lower-cost long-only strategies. About 45 per cent of its assets under management are now in long-only funds.
Mr Sorrell joined Man Group in 2011 as the head of strategy and corporate development from Goldman Sachs, where he was a managing director. He became Man’s CFO in 2012, with responsibility for finance, strategy, human resources, operations, property, technology and communications.
He will be co-president alongside Luke Ellis, who joined Man Group in 2011 after taking four years off from the hedge fund industry to raise pigs.