By Simon Jessop
LONDON (Reuters) - Jupiter Fund Management (L:JUP) said on Thursday clients pulled 373 million pounds ($456.44 million) from its investment products during the fourth quarter, with withdrawals largely by institutional investors exiting its European and multi-manager strategies.
Over the 12 months to end-December, though, net mutual fund inflows were 859 million pounds, it said, raising year-end assets under management by 13 percent to 40.5 billion pounds from 35.7 billion at the end of 2015.
Jupiter said the effects of market uncertainty on the firm's performance during the year had been muted, although it expected global political and economic uncertainty to continue to affect investor sentiment in 2017.
Financial market volatility was fuelled during the year by concerns about growth in China, Britain's vote to leave the European Union and the U.S. election, among other issues, while the year ahead sees a batch of elections in Europe.
"Overall, 2016 was positive for Jupiter. We continued to diversify our business by product, client type and geography and delivered strong investment performance after fees across a broad range of strategies," Chief Executive Maarten Slendebroek said.
Jupiter said market gains during the fourth quarter, with global stock markets at or near record highs, had marginally offset the impact of client withdrawals.
It attracted fresh money into its absolute return, fixed income and emerging markets strategies, Jupiter said.
On the Q4 outflows, Numis analyst David McCann, who holds an 'add' rating on the stock, said: "This was mainly driven by a larger one-off outflow from Merlin Income in October. We calculate that November and December were both positive flow months ...We also calculate (small) positive flows have been delivered so far in January."