JB Were and Son has consolidated and rebadged its asset management arm in a bid to reflect the increasing amount of new retail business flowing into managed funds
JB Were and Son has consolidated and rebadged its asset management arm in a bid to reflect the increasing amount of new retail business flowing into managed funds.
While the name change from JB Were and Sons Asset Management to JB Were Investment Management seems mainly cosmetic, chief executive officer Michael Clarke says it marks the bringing together of various strands of the business.
“The asset management side of things was not organised into one group and so had several reporting procedures independent of each other and we concentrated on combining administration, marketing and investment into one stream reporting di-rectly to myself,” Clarke says.
“We have made a very determined effort with a doubling in size of staff in the last year as we see managed funds becoming highly favoured in the next 10 years.”
Up to now, JB Were has not had a large presence in the managed funds market since the other parts of the group’s business have been doing well, but Clarke be-lieves people’s interest in managed funds is starting to take off.
“Our strategic view was serving clients through our traditional areas such as broking but we saw the need for managed funds as the quality and amount of floats has begun to decrease,” Clarke says.
The thrust towards managed funds will be primarily on the retail market but will also take on some wholesale clients even though Clarke says $1 billion of funds under management are divided evenly between the two at present.
“We are a small to mid size player and going forward the priority is towards retail investors with institutional clients a very close second. We would like to see funds under management grow to $5-$10 billion in the next five years,” Clarke says.
Last August JB Were and Sons formed an alliance with Wellington Management Company LLP to manage their international funds with Wellington currently re-sponsible for five funds, covering diversified global equities and specialist Euro-pean and Japanese funds.
