The Pendal Group Ltd (ASX: PDL) share price is up 1% to $7.66 after the former BT Investment Group reported that total funds under management (FUM) fell around 8.5% or $8.8 billion for the quarter ending December 31 2018, compared to the quarter ending September 30 2018.
The final quarter of calendar year 2018 was atrocious for equity markets with $8.6 billion of the disappearing FUM due to falling equity markets and $0.2 billion in negative FUM flows.
This is a respectable result for Pendal with the group's Pendal branded operations actually delivering positive FUM flows of $400 million, which was offset by the JO Hambro Group delivering $600 million in net outflows.
The JO Hambro business is more exposed to Asian, European and UK equity markets that were especially choppy in the final quarter of 2018 due to investor nervousness over Brexit, Italy's debt pile, and a China slowdown among other things.
The Pendal share price is now down more than 30% over the past year as what turned out to be a poor 2018 for global equity markets takes its toll on investor sentiment and FY 2019's profit outlook.
