Henderson says market conditions challenging
Henderson Group said demand for investment management products has been subdued as market conditions have remained challenging since the start of the year.
However, the fund manager still expects to achieve its financial objective to meet or beat 2007 operating pre-tax profit in its Henderson Global Investors unit and to achieve a cost-to-income ratio of 65% or less.
Net inflows into the group's higher margin businesses were broadly flat in the four month to 30 April, while assets under management in Hedge funds (£1.2bn), US Property (£1.3bn), Private Equity (£1.2bn) and Structured Products (£1.8 billion) remained stable.
(Article continues below)Advertisement
"Global market conditions in the first four months of the year have been difficult. Retail investor confidence, particularly as a consequence of the credit crunch, is fragile and, as expected, flows into our Wholesale funds have been subdued," said chief executive Roger Yates.
"The current outlook for our Property and Institutional businesses, however, looks promising and we are pursuing a number of initiatives to expand our hedge fund assets over the next 12 to 18 months. In general, 2008 fundraising will be biased towards the second half of the year," he added.
