Man Group united, buys back plunging shares

Top executives at Man Group PLC, the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund company, are hedging their bets by buying up hundreds of thousands of shares of company stock after some gloomy news pushed the stock down 20% yesterday.
Shares of the London-based company took a big hit after it was reported that investors withdrew $2.6 billion during the third quarter, reflecting a pace of outflows not seen since the financial crisis period of early 2009.
According to published reports, chief executive Peter Clarke said on a conference call: “Sentiment is clearly in the doldrums. A lot of what happens from here will be dictated by wider market sentiment.”
While it’s hard to predict the direction of that wider market sentiment, it appears the mood inside the $65 billion hedge fund operation already is looking up.
Reuters reported today that Mr. Clarke was among a group of senior executives who spent about $138,000 each to purchase 150,000 shares of company stock.
According to the report, Mr. Clarke was joined on his buying binge by finance director Kevin Hayes and chief operating officer Emmanuel Roman.
Man Group did not respond to a request for comment.
Overall, the $2 trillion hedge fund industry has been working hard to keep investors on board, especially after they pulled about $300 billion from the industry during the financial crisis.
These days, nervous investors are a fact of life, said Lee Hennessee, managing principal of the Hennessee Group LLC.
“While our index is outperforming the market, our clients, who are all seasoned direct investors in hedge funds, are moving to more cash because of the global uncertainty,” she said. “But they’re not leaving the asset class entirely, because they’re committed to a hedge fund allocation of between 15% and 50%.”