Activist investor Edward Bramson effectively staged a board room coup earlier this year at F&C Asset Management, but having installed himself as chairman, he has continued to build up his interest in the company.
On Friday, he acquired a beneficial interest of 200,000 shares in the asset management firm at a cost of 71.84p per share, through SIGA LP, an associate company of his.
Bramson recently completed a strategic review and has decided to take the company in a slightly different direction.
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His plan is for F&C to focus heavily on insurance and defined benefit pension fund clients. These two groups are increasingly looking to expand their fixed income investments (e.g. bonds).
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F&C is quite good at fixed income, with 78% of its investments outperforming their benchmarks. By selling these products vigorously to institutional clients Bramson believes F&C can extricate itself from its current difficulties, which have seen it lose 66% of its share price in the last five years and a whopping 20% or so in the year to date.
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