Man Group has ordered its London-based analysts to return temporarily to the office five days a week, as the world’s biggest listed hedge fund seeks to recover from a period of poor performance sparked by Donald Trump’s tariff war.
Quantitative analysts working at Man AHL, the company’s computer-run fund that aims to identify and follow momentum in markets, have been told they are expected to be in its offices daily until the end of July as part of an “all hands on deck” project.
The edict applies to about 150 staff in London, just under 10% of the overall group’s 1,700 global employees, the Financial Times reported.
“Man AHL has asked its staff in London to work in the office five days a week for a three-month period to support an ‘all hands on deck’ cross-team research project,” the company said. “While these cross-team initiatives are infrequent, experience has shown that a period of highly focused, in-person collaboration allows significant research progress to be made in a relatively short amount of time.”
The company, which has been a champion of flexible working arrangements including working from home, said that its “broader agile working policy remains unchanged”.
Employees tend to be in the office three days a week, on average. However, this varies by role.
Trump’s destabilising tariff war has resulted in significant volatility in global markets, which has made it difficult for computer-based funds such as AHL to predict market trends.
The company’s most recent financial statement showed that the start of Trump’s trade war in April wiped out all of the assets under management gains made by Man Group in the first quarter.
Its holdings were up $4bn (£3bn) in the first three months of the year but plummeted by $5.6bn in the first two weeks of April.
The AHL Alpha programme, Man’s institutional trend-following strategy, has lost 10% so far this year. Man Group’s share price is down more than 30% over the past year.
Man Group is the latest major financial services company to revisit its flexible working policies.
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Last month, BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset management company, told its approximately 1,000 managing directors globally that they were expected to work from the office full time.
The New York-based company told staff in 2023 that they had to go into the office at least four days a week.
Earlier this year, JP Morgan Chase summoned all its workers back into the office. Jamie Dimon, the head of the bank, has long been a proponent of restoring pre-pandemic working patterns.
Barclays also hardened its stance on remote working earlier this year, saying that all staff should work from the office at least three days a week, up from a previous requirement of two days.
