GAM's £96M sale collapsed — five years after the scandal that started the slide

The slide began five years earlier with GAM's star fund manager Tim Haywood: the scandal around the funds he ran and Greensill Capital exposure ended in suspensions in 2018, a £9.1 million fine for GAM in 2022 and a £230,000 personal one for Haywood. Clients left and did not come back — the firm was haemorrhaging cash and its shares had fallen nearly 95% over five years by the summer of 2023.

In May 2023 Liontrust tabled a £96 million all-share takeover. A rebel investor group called NewGAMe, backed by Rock Investments, fought it as an undervaluation, and on 24 August 2023 Liontrust conceded defeat: only 33% of shareholders had voted in favour by the deadline, and Liontrust wrote off £11 million of deal costs. The next month NewGAMe seized the board and the chief executive's office, installing Elmar Zumbuehl; in October, Rock Investments finalised a CHF 100 million support package in return for a 30% stake.

The books kept falling through the rescue: a 290 million Swiss franc net loss in 2022 was followed by an 82.1 million franc loss in 2023, driven by shrinking fees on shrinking assets. Net outflows ran to 4.7 billion francs in 2023, and the year closed with 19.3 billion francs under management against 23.2 billion a year before. The firm had refused a £96 million sale as an undervaluation; it ended the year owned in part by the shareholders who had blocked it.