M&G veteran to step down as chief funding officer

M&G’s chief funding officer is leaving the corporate after greater than twenty years, amid a altering of the guard on the FTSE 100-listed financial savings and funding group.

Jack Daniels, who oversees M&G’s £324bn asset administration division, stated in a memo despatched to purchasers that he plans to retire from the enterprise in June subsequent yr.

Daniels’s departure comes as M&G is searching for a brand new chief govt, following the announcement in April that John Foley, who has been within the job since 2015, is retiring. Foley will proceed within the place till a successor is in place.

M&G was purchased by insurer Prudential in 1999 and later merged with its UK and European enterprise. Twenty years later the enlarged M&G was demerged from Prudential after the insurer determined to concentrate on Asia and Africa.

For the reason that demerger from Prudential in 2019, M&G has struggled to seek out its ft. Shares within the asset supervisor have fallen about 6 per cent since then.

Foley’s substitute is more likely to face stress from buyers to revisit a break-up of M&G, which has beforehand been mooted.

The £370bn group is made up of its asset administration enterprise, in addition to a £211.1bn retail and financial savings division. This encompasses a wealth enterprise — together with its multi-asset with-profits Pru Funds, which easy returns and are standard with retirement savers — and its Heritage annuities enterprise.

Analysts and buyers have beforehand recommended that the annuities enterprise might be bought and the proceeds reinvested in asset administration. Final yr, FTSE 100 fund group Schroders explored a bid for M&G’s asset administration enterprise however deserted it due to considerations over variations in tradition.

M&G has had a troublesome few years characterised by buyers pulling funds and a declining share worth, however it’s displaying tentative indicators of a turnround in efficiency.

It recorded web inflows of £0.6bn for 2021, in contrast with web outflows of £6.6bn a yr earlier. Total belongings below administration rose 0.8 per cent to £370bn through the yr. Nonetheless, income after tax fell sharply to £92mn in contrast with £1.14bn in 2020, which the corporate partially attributed to international alternate swings.

Foley stated in a press release that Daniels “has been instrumental in our funding groups delivering robust efficiency for our purchasers and enabling M&G to keep up its fame for lively funding throughout each private and non-private asset lessons”.

Individually, Meagen Burnett, chief working officer at M&G Funding Administration, has left and is about to hitch Schroders as group deputy chief working officer, in keeping with individuals conversant in the transfer. Schroders declined to remark.

Further reporting by Adrienne Klasa in London