Man Group orders quants back to office five days a week

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Man Group, the world’s largest listed hedge fund manager, has ordered its London-based quants to temporarily return to the office five days a week amid a period of poor performance. 

Man AHL, the firm’s flagship systematic investing arm, has told staff that it now expects daily attendance at the office from its team.

The change applies to about 150 people in London — just under 10 per cent of the overall group’s 1,700 employees globally — and covers a three-month period from May until the end of July.

“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,” said Man Group.

“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,” it added. “The firm’s broader agile working policy remains unchanged.”

The directive is a change in stance for the $172.6bn asset manager. Man Group has historically viewed its culture of flexible working arrangements, including working from home, as a competitive advantage.

“You cannot imagine how badly this has gone down with quants,” said a person familiar with the situation. “The mood is bad.”

The situation varies by role. But on average, employees tend to be in the office three days a week, according to a second person familiar with the situation.

Man Group’s cross-team effort comes as computer-driven hedge funds such as AHL have suffered significant losses this year.

The market volatility triggered by US President Donald Trump’s on-off trade war has made one of their main strategies — trying to latch on to persistent market trends — difficult, as markets have swung in different directions. 

Man Group’s AHL is one of the longest-running systematic hedge fund managers. Its flagship institutional trend-following strategy, the AHL Alpha Programme, lost 10 per cent so far this year, and was up just 3.2 per cent in 2024.

Despite longtime efforts to diversify the wider business beyond AHL, Man Group’s share price remains closely linked to the performance of its quant business because of the higher fees it commands. The company’s shares have lost a third of their value in the past 12 months.

Man Group is the latest financial services group to tighten its flexible working policies. Last month the Financial Times revealed that BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, was telling staff that its roughly 1,000 managing directors globally would be expected to work from the office full time. 

Other large financial institutions such as JPMorgan have also curtailed flexible working policies, with the US bank in January ordering its more than 300,000 employees to come back into the office five days a week. 

JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon has been one of the most vocal opponents of a work-from-home culture, which he has said “doesn’t work for young people . . . doesn’t work for management . . . doesn’t work for innovation.”