Institutional Investor (August 3)
“The major shift to passive fund management has increased the need for M&A” so that asset managers can “gain scale and survive increasing pressure” on client fees. The same shift, however, is also deterring potential buyers. “Mergers and acquisitions in the asset and wealth management industry declined in the second quarter,” with the number of deals falling by nearly a third from the first quarter.
Tags: Asset managers, Buyers, Fees, M&A, Passive fund management, Scale, Shift
Institutional Investor (January 26)
“It’s not even been a week in office and the Trump administration has already managed to send shivers of excitement through the arcane world of infrastructure investment with talk of new domestic projects…. Not surprisingly, asset managers with infrastructure teams are jumping on the renewed interest in the asset class, holding press briefings and webinars to provide clarity.”
Tags: Asset class, Asset managers, Clarity, Excitement, Infrastructure, Investment, Projects, Trump
Institutional Investor (November 30)
“Today’s asset managers are using sell-side research much differently than they did in the past…. A whopping 66 percent of respondents value sell-side research to a small extent or not at all, and 61 percent already are aggregating market sentiment—as a means of understanding prevailing views or counteropinions—rather than using individual research recommendations.”
Tags: Asset managers, Counteropinions, Individual recommendations, Market sentiment, Prevailing views, Research, Sell-side
Institutional Investor (November 8)
Are we approaching “the end of research as we know it?” The portion of fees that goes to research (equity or bonds) is a mystery, but the veil will soon be lifted. On January 3, 2018, the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II will require “that asset managers break out the costs of research from their own management fees and pay for them separately.” The result will probably be “that less research is spewed.” This could bring “potentially wrenching consequences for the research industry and its core users among active asset managers.”
Institutional Investor (April 7)
In 2013, asset managers “poured a record of $43.7 billion into Japanese equities….and the massive net inflows helped propel the Nikkei 225 index up nearly 57 percent—it’s largest gain in more than 40 years.” As concerns mount about the sustainability of Abenomics, however, “many of those investors have been reversing course.” Nevertheless, some top analysts, such as Mizuho’s Yohei Osade and Nomura’s Jun Konoumi, believe the concerns are overblown and that any consumption tax related slow down will be temporary.
Tags: Abenomics, Analysts, Asset managers, Consumption tax, Equities, Inflows, Investors, Japan, Jun Konoumi, Mizuho, Nikkei, Nomura, Yohei Osade
