GAM Holding, the Swiss-listed investment house, said its assets under management rose 9 per cent during last year to stand at SFr116.2 billion ($123.2 billion).

GAM Holding, the Swiss-listed investment house, said today that its assets under management rose 9 per cent during last year to stand at SFr116.2 billion ($123.2 billion), helped by SFr2.4 billion of new money, with SFr700 million coming from its purchase of a majority stake in Arkos Capital.

Positive market movements in 2012 also helped to drive the AuM increase, GAM Holding said in a statement today.  

However, foreign exchange markets had an adverse impact on the AuM figures, with a negative impact of SFr700 million, mainly due to a weakening of the dollar against the Swiss franc, it said.

Adjusted for certain non-cash items, the firm logged an underlying net profit for 2012 of SFr162.0 million, down by 2 per cent from a year ago. As a result of the group's share buy-backs and the reduction in shares outstanding, however, earnings per share rose from SFr0.91 to SFr0.94.

The vigour in our asset-gathering activities and the tailwinds from market performance were particularly satisfactory after a challenging 2011. These results confirm that, from our private banking heritage, we have successfully transformed ourselves into a truly independent, growing and diversified asset management group," chairman and chief executive Johannes de Gier said.

Entities

GAM Holding comprises two several discrete entities: GAM and Swiss & Global. In the former business, assets under management at the end of last December stood at SFr48.7 billion, up from SFr44.8 billion.

At Swiss & Global Asset Management, assets under management as at 31 December were SFr87.6 billion, compared to SFr76.9 billion a year earlier. Inflows into the Julius Baer-branded fund range were predominantly driven by the fixed income strategies, GAM Holding said.

The absolute return and local emerging market bond funds managed by GAM were the strongest contributors, with the Zurich-managed range also attracting net inflows, mainly across the total return, credit opportunities and hard currency emerging market bond funds.

Executive

As originally announced on 16 January, GAM Holding proposed changes to its executive board. At its annual meeting on 17 April, Johannes de Gier will stand for re-election retaining solely his position as chairman. David Solo, the CEO of the group's two operating businesses, will then assume the newly-created role of group CEO, reflecting the move towards a more integrated group structure.

At the same time, the executive board of GAM Holding becomes a group management board and its membership expanded to include core operations and distribution functions.