MONACO (Bloomberg) — Fidelity International Ltd. chief executive officer Barry Bateman said clients have withdrawn about $3 billion from the firm's European Growth Fund since manager Graham Clapp said at the start of the year that he was quitting.The London-based affiliate of the world's largest mutual fund manager said its UK Special Situations Fund, which it split in two last year and where Anthony Bolton will finish overseeing money at the end of this year, has had redemptions of "hundreds of millions" of dollars. The outflows from both funds are lower than the company expected, Bateman said.

"You grow for a while, you plateau for while, and we are going through a plateau," Bateman said in an interview at the Fund Forum conference in Monaco yesterday. "It will take a number of years before people feel comfortable with" the new managers.

Financial advisers tend to recommend funds depending on who is overseeing assets and a change in manager can mean a fund being pulled from a broker's list of chosen portfolios. Bolton had overseen the Special Situations Fund since 1979 and had helped turn Fidelity into the UK's largest mutual fund company. Clapp had worked at the company for 22 years and helped turn the European Growth Fund into Europe's largest mutual fund.

Sanjeev Shah will take over from 57-year-old Bolton managing the UK Special Situations Fund. Last year Bolton split the fund in two and ceded half to Jorma Korhonen, which the new manager is now running as a global portfolio.