Man Group CEO takes home biggest pay package since 2008

By Nell Mackenzie

LONDON (Reuters) – Luke Ellis, the chief executive of hedge fund Man Group, earned $11.3 million last year from his base salary, bonus payment and share grants, the highest of any Man Group head in the last 14 years, the company’s annual report released on Tuesday showed.

Man Group, as a public company traded on London’s FTSE 250 index, is a rarity among hedge funds. Part of Ellis’s performance package tracks the share price over the past three years, which has risen roughly 65% since the start of 2020.

Large investors such as pension schemes and sovereign wealth funds use hedge funds to guard against broader market volatility. In 2020, the S&P fell by over a third and then recovered 40%.

The broader HFRI Composite Index, which tracks the performance of hedge funds, rose by about 12% in 2020, according to data firm Hedge Fund Research (HFR). Over the past three years, the index has posted about an average 9% return.

Over the last three years, Man Group, which uses discretionary and computer led strategies to trade, has taken in $18.7 billion of new client money and made $11.5 billion in investment gains.

In 2008, Peter Clarke, the former CEO of the hedge fund, took home $14 million.

(This story has been corrected to change the stock index to FTSE 250 from FTSE 100 in paragraph 2)

(Reporting by Nell Mackenzie; editing by Dhara Ranasinghe and Christina Fincher)