One of London’s oldest hedge funds, Adelphi Capital is set to convert into a family office after its run of poor performance, which is another sign that equity managers are facing difficulty in managing sharp sell-offs in markets.
Adelphi was set up in 1997 and had been managing more than $4.5bn in assets as of 2020. The firm said in a letter to investors that it would focus on restructuring its business and would also return money in its flagship Adelphi Europe fund to external clients.
As noted on its website, Adelphi will continue to operate as a family office and its co-founders and fund managers, Roderick Jack and Marcel Jongen will retire. The firm said that said that it had made “multibillion-dollar gains” in the last 25 years for its investors, plans to return $3.3bn to its clients.
Adelphi has been focused on growth stocks, inclusive of invests in tech groups with strong prospects has made average annual gains of around 8 percent since it launched 25 years ago. The gains also included double-digit returns in 2017, 2019, and 2020.
However, the firms performance suffered in the last year, it lost 8.3 percent according to investors and went down to 15.7 percent this year. Adelphi declined to comment on this.
Adelphi now plans to help its new investment managers launch and build its funds. According to the letter, Jack and Jongen will remain invested in the fund, which has liquidated almost all of its holdings.
‘Adelphi Capital to become a family office after run of poor performance‘- Financial Times
