The investment firm co-founded by The Spectator magazine owner and GB News backer Sir Paul Marshall has seen its yearly profit slide by nearly two-thirds.
Marshall Wace, which is one of the UK’s most successful hedge funds, unveiled its annual financial results in new company filings.
It showed a pre-tax profit of about £192 million for the year to the end of February 2024, a 64% drop from the £539 million generated the previous year.
The global alternative investment company was launched in 1997 by Sir Paul and Ian Wace.
It has since grown rapidly to manage about 70 billion US dollars (£56.4 billion) in assets.
In September, it was confirmed that Sir Paul had paid £100 million to buy the influential political publication through his Old Queen Street Ventures business.
The businessman said he was a “long-term Spectator reader” and planned to “make good previous underinvestment” in the nearly 200-year-old magazine.
He was already the co-owner of British broadcaster GB News, helping to fund the launch of the news channel in 2021.
Marshall Wace’s accounts show that turnover fell from £1.2 billion to £769 million year-on-year.
Performance fees – which are paid to investment managers to reward them for generating returns – also dropped sharply from nearly £600 million to £163 million.
The company said an updated five-year profit forecast had taken into account “the potential impacts of political uncertainty and instability in the wider global economy”.
Marshall Wace has offices globally, including in London, New York and Shanghai, with hundreds of employees.
Sir Paul, who was knighted in 2016 for services to education and philanthropy, is the chairman and chief investment officer of the hedge fund group.