All Strategically Speaking articles – Page 7
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Interviews
M&G Fixed Income: Shining a light in the cracks
IPE editor Liam Kennedy sits down with M&G chief executive Simon Pilcher
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Interviews
Bradesco AM: Taking local global
Surprisingly, for its size, Bradesco has spent most of its first 50 years as a resolutely local firm
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Interviews
Beyond US sub-prime
If Philip Weingord, co-founder and CEO of Seer Capital Management, isn’t ‘Mr Structured Credit’, then co-founder and CIO Richard d’Albert would be just as good a candidate.
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Interviews
Of orange blood and quieting storms
It has been a stormy four years at ING Investment Management – but the skies are finally starting to clear.
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Interviews
An emerging markets coup
After a burst of acquisitive growth during its years as the investment division of Lehman Brothers, Neuberger Berman’s time as an independent asset manager has instead been spent redefining its brand, building track records and expanding its global reach.
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Interviews
Degrees of freedom
It has been a busy Q1 for Artisan Partners. At the time of writing, the 19-year-old firm was on the brink of its IPO. Aiming to raise almost $330m with which to clear its loans, buy back shares and reward its pre-IPO partners, the event feels like the foundation for the firm’s next stage of growth.
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Interviews
Emerging markets, changing world
Julian Mayo, co-CIO at emerging markets specialist Charlemagne Capital, has a memory from the early 1990s that serves as a corrective to the idea of ‘de-coupling’.
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Interviews
Focus and flexibility
One can tell from the name ‘Alternative Investment Group’ that this is a more venerable fund of hedge funds, pre-dating the post-dot-com stampede: it’s not exactly ‘Google-search optimised’.
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Interviews
Enjoying a Renaissance
Renaissance Asset Managers (RAM) has had a great run since it was founded as part of Renaissance Group, the Moscow-based financial services firm, in 2003.
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Interviews
Boutique ambition
Natixis Asset Management (NAM) might be less well known than other firms in the Natixis Global Asset Management (NGAM) empire, such as Boston’s Loomis Sayles or Chicago’s Harris Associates. But the Paris firm is by far the largest asset manager in its parent’s multi-affiliate structure in asset terms, in part thanks to its historic ties with France’s Caisse d’Epargne and Banque Populaire network, and its strong local roots.
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Interviews
Cutting through the noise
“There is almost universal agreement that the world needs long-term investors and, indeed, that short-termism is bad,” says Keith Skeoch, CEO of Standard Life Investments (SLI), addressing a room of European finance journalists at its Edinburgh offices. “And the reason short-termism is perceived as bad is that the charge sheet is long and serious.”
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Interviews
Institutional ambition
It probably wasn’t planned this way, but Four Capital Partners was set up by Derrick Dunne and ex-Schroders UK equities managers Tom Carroll, Ted Williams and Chris Rodgers on the precipice of the financial crisis. Established in 2006, its first UK equities fund was launched in April 2007, on the very day that New Century Financial went Chapter 11.
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Interviews
Life on planet TOBAM
Quantitative asset managers aren’t particularly noted for prioritising ESG matters.
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Interviews
Holding hedge funds to account
Bond yields sit at historic lows, growth is sparse and equities aren’t cheap. The result: a search for yield in credit assets and for alpha in liquid alternative investments.
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Interviews
Practising what it preaches
As one of the world’s leading mezzanine and credit managers, Intermediate Capital Group spends every waking hour analysing, interrogating – and worrying over – the way companies manage their balance sheets. So it should come as no surprise that the firm is pretty handy at managing its own.
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Interviews
The implementation game
Russell’s recent move to Seattle from its historic location in Tacoma, Washington, just a few miles to the south, had the inevitable effect of pleasing urbanite employees happy to work and live in the bigger city and inconveniencing others who liked the old panoramic view over Commencement Bay and who faced a longer commute or higher real estate prices.
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Interviews
De-leveraging, beautiful and beastly
Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha is famed as the world’s largest hedge fund, earning $13.8bn for investors in 2011 alone. But today, over coffee in a luxury London hotel, the focus for Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer of the Connecticut-based firm, is on a beta strategy called ‘risk parity’.
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Interviews
On avoiding hostages to fortune
There is no disputing Northern Trust’s powerhouse status in global custody and asset servicing in Europe. In the UK alone, a big custody contract was renewed by the London Borough of Hillingdon’s pension scheme in 2012, and, along with several similar renewals, it added €19.5bn in custody assets for 13 new clients during 2011, including major names such as the Lothian Pension Fund, the Lancashire County Council Pension Scheme and the Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London (SAUL). Transition management mandates were won from the likes of the Northumberland County Council and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea pension funds. Losses – such as the East Riding Pension Fund custody mandate that went to State Street – were rare exceptions in the effort to remain a go-to service provider.
