GAM saw its assets under management decline due to market and foreign exchange impacts in the first quarter. The investment management unit saw clients pulling funds out.

Zurich-based asset manager GAM saw its assets under management (AuM) decline during the first quarter, the firm said Wednesday in its interim report. 

AuM declined by 5.2 billion Swiss francs during the first three months of the year to 94.8 billion francs ($100.0 billion), dragged down by unfavorable markets and foreign exchange effects.

Asset vs Fund Management

The firm's investment management unit experienced a nearly 2 billion francs decline to 30 billion, as clients pulled 270 million out of the firm. Unfavorable market and foreign exchange movements shaved another 1.6 billion off of AuM during the quarter, the firm said.

Conversely, AuM at GAM's funds unit saw net inflows of 290 million francs during the quarter, but market fluctuations helped push overall AuM down by 3.5 billion francs to 64.8 billion, the firm said. Clients outside of Switzerland bore the brunt of those developments, as 3.21 billion francs of value was lost. Swiss clients saw a decline of 310 million. To be sure, Swiss fund clients have 14.4 billion francs of AuM compared to the rest of Europe with 53.6 billion. 

«This has been an encouraging first quarter for GAM with net positive inflows for the firm overall. I am pleased that, despite pressure on the level of assets under management in the current market environment, our Investment Management business continues to improve with net inflows across a range of strategies and reduced outflows from our larger fixed income strategies,» said CEO Peter Sanderson.

Institutional Client Yanks Funds 

Looming ahead, however, was an announcement in March that an institutional client will transfer around 10.5 billion Swiss francs ($11.2 billion) in fund assets to its own fund management company from April 2023, while leaving around 1 billion francs with GAM Fund Management Services. The assets generated around 6 million francs of annual revenue for GAM, as finews.com reported. 

GAM also announced that David Dowsett joined the firm as its new head of investments.