Gam Investments has hired Magnus Jahnke to be its head of Nordics distribution.
Jahnke will be based in Stockholm and report directly to Jill Barber, global head of institutional solutions. He joins the firm at the beginning of September. In this role, Jahnke will be responsible for Gam’s distribution strategy in the Nordics and will lead business development, client service, and engagement with consultants in the region.
Barber said: “I am thrilled to welcome Magnus to Gam. We are committed to growing and deepening our relationships in the Nordic region by providing investment leadership, innovation, and sustainable thinking. Magnus brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this role and I very much look forward to working with him.”
Jahnke joins the firm from Jupiter Asset Management, where he has been managing director and head of Nordics for the past six years. Prior to that, he spent five years at Lancelot Asset Management, latterly as portfolio manager and head of fund selection, which he joined from Nordea Investment Management.
Last week, Expert Investor wrote on how Gam Investments had appointed Roland Mueller to the role of senior investment manager for fixed income. The firm has also recently recruited Christian Zeitler to be its new head of Switzerland wholesale distribution.
The news follows an announcement in February that the firm had had to adjust its profit targets after seeing its assets shed £18bn in value.
As we wrote back then, group assets under management fell sharply to CHF 100bn (£80bn) at the end of December, down CHF 22bn (£17.6bn) from the start of the year.
Off the back of the falling assets Gam said it had ‘revisited’ its financial targets and was now predicting pre-tax profit of at least CHF 50m, underlying operating margin of 20%-30% and a compensation ratio of 45-50% by full year 2024.
GAM suffered a series of blows throughout 2020 and going into 2021. Eighteen months ago, the firm warned of a further hit to revenues following a longstanding client’s decision to move an CHF 21.5bn (€19.95bn) mandate elsewhere.
The Swiss manager said an unnamed client, which has been with the firm for 15 years, would be shifting the assets from its private labelling business to a rival provider as part of a ‘broader strategic relationship’. The mandate was responsible for CHF 5m worth of revenues per year.
The loss of the multi-billion-pound mandate is the latest blow to Gam’s private labelling business, which has been hammered by redemptions in the last 12 months.
While Gam’s investment business returned to its first quarter of net inflows in the final three months of 2020, the private labelling business leaked CHF 3.4bn (£2.8bn), which it said was driven by one client.
Assets in the private labelling unit ended 2020 at CHF 86.1bn compared with CHF 86.5bn a year ago.
