Funds Hub

We’re hardly out of the woods yet, but more and more fund management companies are beginning to feel confident enought to say conditions are improving, if only very slightly.

Today Crosby Asset Management stuck its neck out.

“A modest, but noticeable, improvement in the operating environment was discernible,” it said in its half-yearly report, adding that business at its wealth managment unit “is showing modest signs of improvement”.

Crosby must think this can’t come soon enough. Assets have slumped from $2.2 billion in Q1 2008 to $600 million, while it has said it will close almost all remaining funds from its high-profile but ill-fated acquisition of funds from Forsyth Partners in 2007. In the meantime it is reducing costs and realising assets “wherever possible” and surely hoping those shoots don’t wither.