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UK asset manager Ruffer is planning to axe jobs across the business after a poor investment performance last year, as the industry battles rising costs and pressure on profits.
The London-based boutique, which employs around 330 people and was co-founded by multimillionaire philanthropist Jonathan Ruffer, is cutting about 20 positions, including in its private client and risk teams.
The company said: “We’ve been making the changes needed to best serve existing and new clients in a fast-evolving industry landscape . . . There have been no changes to senior management or investment leadership.”
The cuts comes after a difficult time for the company, with Ruffer himself noting in a letter to investors that 2023 was a “down” year. He said that “too many of the things which were meant to go down went up, and a few — only a few — of the things that were meant to go up went down”.
He added: “We did indeed get it wrong last year, but it has made us look afresh at what we are doing.”
The company’s fund managers have taken a bearish view of equity markets, taking a defensive stance with investments in long-dated, inflation-linked bonds, while betting against growth stocks through short positions.
Jonathan Ruffer has said that inflation “will ultimately prove to be a semi-permanent condition in the western world” but the company’s strategy has weighed on fund performance recently as equity markets have rallied.
The firm’s flagship Total Return fund, which manages £2.3bn, is down 6.4 per cent over the past year, according to the company’s fact sheet, while the FTSE All-Share index is up more than 2.5 per cent. Over 10 years it has delivered a total return of 46.5 per cent compared with its peer group average of 32.5 per cent, according to Citywire.
Its £1bn investment trust also had a tough 2023, with the trust’s managers noting that last year was “the worst in the history of Ruffer Investment Company”.
Ruffer, which manages about £22bn for institutions and private clients, was in the spotlight last year over its connections with fund manager Crispin Odey, who was facing allegations of assault or harassment from women, which he strenuously denies.
Odey was among Ruffer’s early backers, while Ruffer initially used Odey Asset Management’s offices in Upper Grosvenor Street in London’s Mayfair. Jonathan Ruffer also sat on Odey Asset Management’s board until 2002.
As part of the firm’s succession planning, Ruffer restructured its business last year, noting at the time that it was preparing for the eventual retirement of its founder.
The restructuring meant Ruffer Management Limited — through which Ruffer’s founders and original investors including some of Odey’s family derive an income — was no longer a controlling entity in the Ruffer limited liability partnership. Ruffer said at the time that there was “no connection between Crispin Odey and the running of or oversight of Ruffer LLP”.
