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- Man Group CEO Luke Ellis says equities have yet to bottom out.
- Ellis thinks a "significant number" of banks will close in the next two year, he said at the Bloomberg Invest conference.
- Depositors may take their money to larger institutions, he says, on fears regional banks won't be bailed out.
More pain is headed for stocks as turmoil in the banking sector hasn't passed, according to Man Group CEO Luke Ellis.
"We have a big sell off somewhere in our near future," Ellis, the head of the $143 billion asset manager and the world's biggest public hedge fund, said at the Bloomberg Invest conference Wednesday.
Equities have not yet bottomed in the current market cycle, he said, citing potential for credit risks or volatility from corporate earnings.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the closure of others specialist firms like Silvergate and Signature, along with financial concerns over at Credit Suisse, has rocked markets. Shares of SVB peers like First Republic and PacWest have shed nearly 90% and 60% in the past month, respectively, on contagion concerns.
Following a few weeks of intense volatility, markets have retraced some losses but are wavering as investors digest the news and assess the latest policy move from the Federal Reserve.
Ellis said chaos in the banking system could last another two years, and smaller regional banks are at a higher risk of closing down.
"A significant number of banks will not exist 12 [to] 24 months from now," the hedge fund exec said, adding that some firms could be taken over by larger rivals similar to the UBS deal to buy Credit Suisse.
Customers could also take their deposits to larger institutions, those that they see as being more stable.
"What that means is that at any time of stress, people are going to move their money to one of the banks that they think the government is behind, and that means the deposit base of any of the smaller banks becomes flighty," he said. "Banking doesn't work if you haven't got a stable deposit base as we've just seen. And they are naturally less stable now."