Bloomberg (January 19)
“Chinese stocks just capped another dismal week…. Grim milestones have kept piling up in recent days: Tokyo has overtaken Shanghai as Asia’s biggest equity market, while India’s valuation premium over China has hit a record. Locally, a meltdown in Chinese shares is wreaking havoc on the nation’s asset management industry, pushing mutual fund closures to a five-year high.”
Tags: Asset management, China, Closures, Dismal, Equity market, Grim, Havoc, India, Meltdown, Milestones, Mutual fund, Premium, Record, Shanghai, Shares, Stocks, Tokyo, Valuation
Financial Times (November 21)
“We’ve been sceptical of the asset management craze for ESG…. So it’s only fair that we highlight some intriguing work that shows that just maybe some of all this is actually having a clear, measurable and positive impact.” Female representation on U.S. corporate boards remains low, but “grew by over 50 per cent in 2016-19, going from a pretty pathetic 13.1 per cent of directors to a still-bad-but-much better 19.7 per cent.” Some attribute “this to the role played by the passive investment industry’s ‘Big Three’ — BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street — which started to very publicly make a lot of noise about this issue a few years back.”
Tags: “Big Three”, 2016-19, Asset management, BlackRock, Corporate boards, Craze, Directors, ESG, Female representation, Measurable, Passive investment, Positive impact, Sceptical, State Street, U.S., Vanguard
Investment Week (April 13)
“2021 was a stand-out year for environmental finance, as COP26, a new US administration, and rapid growth in industry collaboration drove climate action and commitments across businesses and the asset management industry.” Morningstar found that “the number of mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) with a climate-focused mandate grew to 860 at the end of last year… and assets in the space doubled to $408bn.”
Tags: 2021, Asset management, Assets, Businesses, Climate action, Collaboration, Commitments, COP26, Environmental finance, ETFs, Mandate, Morningstar, Mutual funds, Rapid growth, Stand-out, U.S.
Investment Week (December 21)
“The asset and wealth management industry is set to face a busy year of regulation, with the impact of recently passed legislation, including sustainability disclosure requirements and new listings rules, combining with that yet to come, such as long term asset funds. Past decisions will also bring change, as LIBOR also comes to an end this year, with very slim exception, while the spectre of Brexit is far from banished.”
Tags: Asset management, Brexit, Disclosure requirements, Funds, Impact, Legislation, LIBOR, Listings rules, Regulation, Sustainability, Wealth
Institutional Investor (August 6)
“Markets may have bounced back quickly from March’s Covid-19 crash, but the asset management industry will not escape 2020 unscathed.” The pandemic is “expected to shrink” the global asset management industry by almost $2 trillion. “The decline in global assets under management ends more than a decade of growth for money managers.”
Tags: Asset management, AUM, COVID-19, Crash, Decline, Growth, Markets, Money managers, Pandemic, Shrink
Institutional Investor (April 1)
“Traditional asset management firms are expected to lose around a third of their assets under management as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.” Fitch Ratings expects BlackRock to be least scathed, although it is still expected to lose over a quarter of its AUM, while AllianceBernstein is “projected to be the worst hit of the peer group,” losing up to 40.4% of its assets.
Tags: AllianceBernstein, Asset management, AUM, BlackRock, Coronavirus, Fitch Ratings, Pandemic, Traditional
Institutional Investor (October 9)
In the U.S. many “asset management stocks are trading like ‘junk equity,’” despite the relatively buoyant market. And “given the lackluster potential for growth, traditional asset managers’ cheap valuations are unlikely to change soon.”
Tags: Asset management, Growth, Junk equity, Lackluster, Market, Potential, Stocks, U.S., Valuations
Institutional Investor (November 13)
“AI will transform asset management,” but “the biggest challenge we face may not be developing powerful predictive AI-based investment models.” Rather, it will be “simply convincing investors not to trust their own judgment. More broadly, the winners and losers will be decided not by the current market position of a firm or even the size of its checkbook, but by its ability to overcome its anthropocentric prejudice and trust AI like it would trust a human being.”
Tags: AI, Anthropocentric, Asset management, Challenge, Investment models, Investors, Judgment, Powerful, Predictive, Trust
Institutional Investor (March 20)
“For years, asset management firms have benefited as the banking industry was dragged down by quantitative easing and increasing regulation. The one-two punch spurred a more than $100 billion divergence in revenues since 2011, with asset managers up $65 billion and wholesale banks down $45 billion at the end of 2016…. But now, with asset managers facing ‘intense’ pressure on fees and with economic policy shifting in favor of banks,” there are growing predictions for “a ‘reversal of fortunes’ for the two sectors.”
Tags: Asset management, Banking, Economic policy, Fees, QE, Regulation, Revenues, Reversal
Institutional Investor (December 29)
“Disruption in the asset management industry is imminent…. Due to a combination of new technologies, shifting demographics and changing client demands, the asset manager of the future must self-regulate, adopt corporate governance by investment firms, invest in technology, and cultivate and keep top-notch talent.”
Tags: Asset management, Client demands, Corporate governance, Demographics, Disruption, Imminent, Self-regulate, Talent, Technology
