Funds Hub
Money managers under the microscope
Crosby aborts its Apollo mission
As predicted last November, troubled fund firm Crosby’s joint venture Apollo Multi Asset Management has struggled to attract assets and today Crosby announced it is pulling out as a partner in the loss-making boutique.
Apollo, a fund of funds venture with fund manager Tom McGrath, produced some respectable performance from its Balanced fund but attracted just 31.2 million pounds in assets.
It will now have to repay regulatory capital of around $180,000 to Crosby as well as the balance of a loan Crosby had made.
A vehicle representing the Nomura Employee Benefit Trust (of which, by the way, Crosy CEO Simon Fry is a potential beneficiary) now plans to take a controlling interest in Apollo.
Green shoots?
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”.
Regrets, I’ve had a few
Crosby Asset Management’s high-profile deal to buy up funds from collapsed asset manager Forsyth Partners in 2007 just looks worse and worse.
Crosby today said that after further demands by clients to withdraw cash it would scrap plans to merge and remarket Forsyth’s funds of hedge funds and instead shut them.
