M&G CEO John Foley
(Picture: M&G)The boss of one of London’s biggest fund managers said today’s crisis has no point of comparison with other recent disasters.
John Foley, the chief executive of M&G, thinks financially the Ukraine situation could be worse than the 2008 financial crash.
“It’s a new shade of bad,” he said. “You’d expect to see market turmoil but the rest of it is not something we have dealt with. It is not a great environment for individuals, we are all going to find it more difficult. From our perspective, we are there to try and mitigate those impacts.”
M&G, which has funds of £370 billion and five million retail customers, saw profits for the year down somewhat to £721 million.
But it feels strong enough to launch a £500 million share buy back programme, boosting returns to investors.
M&G shares rose 25p to 203p on that news.
It has a small exposure to Russia and has marked the value of those assets down to zero. “Anyone holding these kind of assets will be holding them for some time,” said Foley.
M&G demerged from Prudential in 2019 – the insurer moved to focus on Asian operations.
That was supposed to free up the fund manager to grow, though the first year was rocky. Savers pulled money out as Covid raged.
M&G also looks after the old Pru with-profits fund, a £143 billion giant. The statement today admitted to “service” issues.
The company said: “In our legacy business the complexity and scale of replacing old systems mean some of our customers received poor levels of service in 2021. We are sincerely sorry for their experiences and we have made a significant investment to get the issues resolved.”
