Stay informed with free updates
Simply sign up to the Hedge funds myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.
A Man Group investor pulled out $6.1bn in the first quarter, in a move that threatens to slow its efforts to expand beyond its lucrative but low-growth hedge fund division.
The world’s largest listed hedge fund group on Thursday said the withdrawal had come from a client in systematic long-only equity, a strategy that tries to beat a market benchmark with computer-driven investments.
People close to the situation said St James’s Place withdrew more than £4bn from Man Numeric in the first quarter as part of a broader restructuring of SJP’s £13bn Global Equity fund, which has since been renamed. SJP declined to comment.
Assets in the systematic long-only division, which includes Man Numeric, dropped from $76.2bn at the end of last year to $72.4bn, with the redemption partly offset by other investors.
Shares in the FTSE 250 group fell 7.3 per cent on Thursday.
Man Group has historically generated most of its revenues from fees charged to investors in its hedge fund division, known for its computer-driven AHL unit that uses sophisticated mathematical models in an effort to make money in any market environment.
In recent years under chief executive Robyn Grew, Man Group has redoubled efforts to diversify its business away from the hedge fund unit.
Last year, two of its highest-fee and best-known strategies suffered significant losses as markets whipsawed amid volatility triggered by Donald Trump’s trade war, although they recovered the losses by the end of the year.
Investors pulled $1.1bn from the hedge fund division in the first quarter of this year, but this was counteracted by overall positive performance and other miscellaneous factors including foreign-exchange movements, and the unit’s assets rose to $44.1bn from $42.5bn the previous quarter.
The $6.1bn redemption is unlikely to affect overall revenues materially, as the division charges some of the lowest fees in the group. The hedge fund unit last year collected more than four times as much in management fee margin as the systematic long-only business.
The last time the systematic long-only business suffered a major redemption was in the third quarter of 2024, when a single investor pulled $7bn. However, the business overall has grown strongly, with assets almost doubling from $39.6bn in the first quarter of 2025.
Man Group’s overall assets edged $1.1bn higher in the first quarter to $228.7bn.
