Jupiter is back in the news again after this week's announcement that manager Ben Whitmore is upping sticks to set up his own value boutique after nearly 18 years at the company.
Asset Allocator decided to run the numbers to find out how the fund house has fared in the eyes of fund pickers since its 2020 acquisition of Merian.
Enough time has passed, we think, to see whether this takeover has borne fruit, at least within the strict parameters of whether it has led to more allocators holding more Jupiter funds.
We took a peek at the data around DFM ownership of the Jupiter and ex-Merian funds in our database to see who’s kept hold of what over the past few years, and the results were certainly intriguing.
Crucially, there's been a gradual sell-off of Jupiter funds.
In 2018 when our database was constructed, 27 Jupiter and Merian funds were held by allocators. This has now fallen to 16, as at December 2023.
The most dramatic change of these is Jupiter Merian Global Equity Absolute Return (Gear), which was once held by 13 allocators.
This was reduced to one by March 2022, and since to zero – it's worth noting that the fund is managed using algorithms and seems to do best when value is performing better than growth.
Sentiment may also have been dented by the decision of the fund's lead manager, Ian Heslop, to step away in recent years.
UK equity exodus
But it is among the UK equity funds where the real exodus has taken place.
In 2018, there were eight Jupiter or Merian UK equity funds held by DFMs in our database. Now, there are six but this disguises the scale of the sell-off, as all but one of those six funds is held by just one allocator.
The total number of fund holdings has gone down from 24 to 11.
Merian UK Smaller Companies - which is now rebranded as Jupiter UK Smaller Companies - was held by five allocators in 2018 and is now held by just one.
Jupiter UK Mid Cap (once called Merian UK Mid Cap) has gone from two holders in March 2022 to zero now.
Late last year it was crowned the worst performer from 220 products in the IA UK All Companies sector over the past five years to December 1, losing a cool 15 per cent.
The fund has experienced outflows of around £100mn a month.
Its manager Richard Watts is also striking out on his own and taking the Chrysalis Investment Trust with him, which remains owned by two DFMs in our database, though this could be subject to change.
And what of Jupiter UK Alpha - once called Merian UK Alpha - which was run by Richard Buxton, who was once the chief executive of Merian, until last year?
It has seen its number of holders drop from four to zero - though most of this happened before Buxton announced his retirement.
Despite only hanging up his abacus for the last time at the end of summer 2023, most of our allocators had already moved to pastures new.
We asked Jupiter if they wanted to comment on this, but they declined.
Stalwarts of the stable
But there is good news, and most of it can be found among the funds that are stalwarts of the Jupiter stable and did not join through the Merian acquisition.
There’s been a big uptick in Jupiter Japan Income and in Jupiter Special Situations over the past couple of years.
Jupiter Japan Income is now owned by eight allocators, making it one of the most popular funds in its sector within our database, while Jupiter Special Situations is owned by six, putting it just behind Lindsell Train UK Equity and Liontrust Special Situations in terms of popularity among UK equity funds in our database.
Both are up from four houses each since the inception of our database.
But of course this news will be bittersweet given the departure of Special Situations' manager Whitmore, and it remains to be seen what will happen now.
The allocators which hold his fund may follow him to the new boutique or they may put their faith in his successor Alex Savvides, currently of JO Hambro.
The fact Savvides runs a fund - JOHCM UK Dynamic - which is already very popular in our database, suggests Jupiter has fairly good chances of hanging onto them.
But the sharp decline in the popularity of some of these funds shows M&A activity might not be all it is cracked up to be.
joseph.wilkins@ft.com
