All Strategically Speaking articles – Page 6
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Interviews
Strategically speaking: Kames Capital
Edinburgh-based Aegon Asset Management UK made a nod to its home city when it changed its name to Kames Capital in 2011
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Interviews
Strategically speaking: Candriam
“It was difficult to find a name,” recalls Candriam CEO Naim Abou-Jaoudé, a year after Dexia Asset Management needed a rebrand for its acquisition by New York Life Investments. “All the good names are taken!”
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Interviews
Strategically speaking: Thriving on independence
“Our life at AXA was very good,” concedes Ardian’s Vincent Gombault, one year since the private equity firm completed its management buyout of a 52% stake from the insurance giant.
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InterviewsStrategically speaking: Aberdeen Asset Management
The timing of Aberdeen Asset Management’s £600m (€757m) acquisition of Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) at the start of 2014 could not have been better.
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Interviews
Strategically speaking: Grandmaster Capital Management
“Under no circumstances should you play fast if you have a winning position,” advised Hungarian chess Grandmaster Pal Benko. “Use all your time and make good moves.”
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Interviews
Strategically speaking: Assicurazioni Generali
It has been just over two years since Generali CEO Mario Greco took the reins of a company whose governance was in disarray, and whose performance was reflected in a loss of almost 75% of its stock-market value. His appointment immediately stemmed those losses, and the market has since been proved right.
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Interviews
Strategically speaking - Majedie Asset Management: Global, naturally
Before this year, Majedie Asset Management had rolled out just five products since it was established in 2002 – one of which was a concentrated version of another. By those standards, 2014 has seen riotous activity, with the summer launches of a US equities fund and two global funds adding to the existing line-up of UK equity and global long/short funds.
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Interviews
Experience, leveraged
Babson Capital immediately springs to mind for institutional investors around the world seeking global fixed-income managers, but that is a key goal for CEO Tom Finke. Having raised $5bn (€3.9bn) from European investors alone in 2013 it certainly looks well-positioned to one day be ranked among the market leaders.
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Interviews
Three years of the 300
Liam Kennedy spoke to Alan Brown and Saker Nusseibeh, two architects of the 300 Club of investment professionals who seek to challenge mainstream investment practice
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Interviews
Success assured
When Russell Büsst was coaxed from Amundi in 2011 to head Conning’s expansion into Europe, he had three objectives: break even and hit $10bn (€7.38bn) under management within three years; use the firm’s insurance-industry relationships as a platform to build the pan-European business; and balance property-and-casualty (P&C) with life-and-pensions (L&P) assets.
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Interviews
An artisan with solutions
Where one still finds asset managers attached to banks, the former tend to be junior partners. Not so at William Blair, whose founder always had an ambition both to finance and invest in small growth companies from day one in 1935.
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Interviews
Performance built on research
Unigestion’s investment principles tell us that it is “not swayed by short-term trends or techniques which are in vogue”. At first glance that might seem a bit rich, considering its reputation for minimum-variance equities – about as “in vogue” as it gets.
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Interviews
Global expectations
“What makes businesses interesting is how they adapt to a global changing world,” declares John Calamos, founder, chairman, CEO and co-CIO of Calamos Investments. Having set up the firm in 1977, listed it on Nasdaq in 2004 and reached an AUM peak of $49bn (€36bn) in 2007, he is now overseeing a transformation that he intends will take it on a journey from a predominantly US focussed firm to a global fund management company.
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Interviews
Cautious, Swiss and international
As an institutional manager and provider of institutional-type investment management services to private banks, including within its own group, Pictet Asset Management (PAM) clearly stands apart from the private banking fraternity.
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Interviews
Building bridges
They do not come any more Australian than AMP Capital. Its parent company started life as a mutual insurer in Sydney in 1849, and is today headquartered in the city’s first skyscraper, which it financed, and which stands on the site of AMP co-founder and pastoralist Thomas Mort’s wool store. Its commanding views of the famous harbour are the backdrop to board and client meetings.
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Interviews
Operating in the market shadows
Harald Espedal has a party to get to. It is October 2013 and he is in London to celebrate Skagen Funds’ twentieth birthday with the firm’s growing UK team and a host of colleagues from Stavanger in Norway.
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Interviews
Not corporate governance police
Poor governance may have been catapulted into the headlines in recent years, but to-date few asset managers in Europe have been trying to make money through activist strategies. One that does, as part of its range of products, is London’s RWC. In 2013, RWC’s assets under management grew from $5bn (€3.7bn) to $7.5bn, which its CEO Dan Mannix attributes to “a normalisation of opportunities within the equity markets” and a general improvement in investor sentiment.
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InterviewsDrawing a virtuous circle
A number of prominent bank-owned asset managers have been put up for sale at various times since 2009 – a process that has not always been straightforward for the banks or the asset managers. Pioneer Investments’ proposed sale by its parent Unicredit was finally called off in April 2011, which allowed it to focus on a new set of strategic priorities.
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Interviews
Low fashion, high durability
As Thornburg Investment Management’s fourth employee, Brian McMahon arrived in Santa Fe in 1984 around the same time as the firm acquired a second-hand fax machine from the unsuccessful presidential campaign of Walter Mondale.
