According to a Financial Times report, JPMorgan Asset Management, a unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM), plans to close nearly 9 funds from its existing range of products in Europe. This would take the total number of fund closures by the company to 25 in 2013.
Alongside, this US Asset Manager plans to close an additional eight unnamed funds in the next two months. The major reason for JPMorgan to close funds is to simplify its existing fund range.
At present, JPMorgan has the largest number of funds in Asia. It also has 250 funds in Europe and 150 in the U.S. However, in the past few months, JPMorgan has been cutting funds from its existing line of products.
Earlier, JPMorgan had axed 3 funds in Jun 2013, 11 funds in Jul and 2 funds at the beginning of August. Further, upon completion of these fund cuts, JPMorgan plans to axe additional funds from its existing range in Asia and U.S.
Moreover, last year, JPMorgan had closed five euro-denominated money-market and liquidity funds. This was mainly due to the record low interest rates globally and reduction in the supply of debt, following Europe’s sovereign debt crisis at that time. This restricted the money-market funds managers’ ability to generate profit.
Similar to JPMorgan, in Jun 2013, BlackRock, Inc. (BLK) announced its intention to close nearly 250 funds from its existing range of products in order to focus more on portfolios that account for a higher proportion of revenues. The company has also closed 90 portfolios from its Australian fund range, equaling about 50% of various portfolios that it offers to its clients in Australia.
Due to the ongoing European debt crisis and increased regulatory pressures on the money market fund industry, investors have been losing large sums of money. This prompted many fund managers to curb their portfolios from the fund range. Moreover, the continuation of the European crisis is expected to have a significant impact on worldwide capital markets.
JPMorgan currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better performing banks include BankUnited, Inc. (BKU) with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) and M&T Bank Corporation (MTB) with a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
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