Friends Life set to pull £2.3 billion of assets from F&C

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

F&C Asset Management have told their investors that they expect to take a £2.3 billion hit to its assets under management this year when Friends Life decide to withdraw their money from its annuities business.

F&C has said in an update that this morning its former backer has decided to give it a years notice of the withdrawal of said assets.

In the statement, F&C said:"On 9 November 2011 Friends Life announced its intention to launch an in-house asset management subsidiary in the second half of 2012.

"Friends Life has since given F&C 12 months notice of its intention to withdraw £2.3bn of assets, principally in respect of its annuities fund, in December 2012."

Although, F&C have said that the impact on their current years revenues are likely to be minimal.

Elsewhere, the group has reported total assets under management had actually fallen from £103.2bn at the end of September to £100.1 billion at the end of December.

Edward Bramson, executive chairman of F&C, said: "We have made good progress on the strategy we set out in October, showing a modest net inflow, primarily in fixed income mandates, into our third-party institutional business and having a further £1.2bn of won but unfunded mandates in the pipeline.

"The cost reduction programme we set out in our strategic review remains on schedule. We are continuing to work on initiatives to deploy the resources this programme will release into areas of growth for F&C and to the overall improvement of shareholder value."