All Interviews articles – Page 24
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Interviews
Steady hand in a storm
These are interesting times at Copenhagen’s BankInvest. Its 20-strong global equities team was recently reduced to 17 as its head, David Dalgas, resigned, followed by chief portfolio managers Klaus Ingemann Nielsen and Kenneth Graversen. The team still boasts an average of 10 years’ experience, and it maintains that the resignations would not lead directly to changes in its (low turnover, fundamentals-based) global equity portfolios.
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InterviewsNew birth for Neuberger
I first met Dik van Lomwel high up on a deserted floor of 25 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, almost exactly one year ago. The employees of Neuberger Berman, bought by Lehman Brothers in 2000, were the only people left, and the place had a melancholy air. “It’s a tragedy, what happened here,” he said. “Lehman was a genuinely nice place to work – how many firms on the Street had senior people who stuck around for so long? But now we have the opportunity to take that forward into the new firm.”
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Interviews
The full toolbox
Think Lyxor Asset Management’s brand-defining products and the word ‘barbell’ comes to mind: on one end, Lyxor ETFs and other index products (the cheapest and most passive vehicles); at the other, the market-leading hedge fund managed account platform (the most expensive and active investment strategies).
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Interviews
Modelling talent – and tails
We all know that finding alpha is tough. But managing a portfolio of alpha sources is also trickier than it seems. Many assume that a hedge fund manager’s idiosyncratic risk has a stable relationship with his beta exposures (which is unsatisfactory); and that idiosyncratic risk is normally-distributed and, by definition, non-correlated with other idiosyncratic risks (which is potentially disastrous). Very few have made significant progress beyond these assumptions, but it should come as no surprise that one of those few is fund of hedge funds Caliburn Capital Partners – because building portfolios of alpha is its raison d’être.
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Interviews
YouTube not yet the communication star
On The Record How do you communicate with members?
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InterviewsIn your style
If ‘manager of managers’ was once the way SEI chose to explain its European business, it has now embraced fiduciary management. Or as Patrick Disney, managing director of SEI’s EMEA institutional business, likes to put it: “When we started here, head office told us to sell what they called a ‘bundled outsourced retirement platform’, which I always thought was a bit of a mouthful. But essentially it was what we now call fiduciary management.”
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Interviews
Concentrating on value
“Believe it or not,” says David Barse, president and CEO of Third Avenue Management, “I think we’re boring. Our portfolio might look interesting, but we never change our style or basic investment philosophy for different markets, or even for different asset classes, market-caps or regions. I once overheard an investor who thought he’d muted the conference phone say, ‘This guy says the same damn thing every time’. I thought that was the greatest compliment.”
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Interviews
Concentrating on value
“Believe it or not,” says David Barse, president and CEO of Third Avenue Management, “I think we’re boring. Our portfolio might look interesting, but we never change our style or basic investment philosophy for different markets, or even for different asset classes, market-caps or regions.
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Interviews
A Hamburg asset
The phlegmatic Hamburgers are often compared with the British by dint of their conservative outlook and controlled disposition. Perhaps no wonder that a Hamburg institution like Berenberg Bank should already count a UK local government pension fund among its asset management clients – and that it should be hunting for more such clients outside the German speaking world.
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Interviews
American half-century
f you are wondering why it took 50 years for American Century Investments to open its first offices outside the US, it is instructive to look at who owns the business. Among the partners, primary control is held by the cancer research group associated with the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in the firm’s home town of Kansas City. About eight years ago American Century’s founder, Jim Stowers, now an octagenarian cancer survivor, donated almost all of his wealth to establish the institute. Since 2000, 40% of the firm’s profits have been paid as an annual dividend to the institute – a total of more than $750m.
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Interviews
Hedge fund hermeneutics
Although pension funds and their consultants are weaning themselves off their obsession with three-year track records, few would choose to park $1.3bn with a brand new fund of hedge funds – even if its founding partners bring two decades of experience from hedge fund stalwarts like Olympia, Pioneer and Momentum.
