All Strategically Speaking articles – Page 9

  • Interviews

    ‘Risk is everything to us’

    May 2011 (Magazine)

    Asset managers’ products rarely surprise anyone. You’re an equities specialist? You’ll have US, European, UK, emerging markets funds, maybe Japan. Fixed income? I’ll choose from your treasuries, gilts and Eurozone products, investment grade and high yield, maybe local currency emerging markets. There might even be some convertibles tucked away somewhere.

  • Interviews

    Accent on EM capability

    May 2011 (Magazine)

    Rudolf Apenbrink, HSBC Global Asset Management’s new EMEA CEO, outlined his firm’s strategy to Liam Kennedy following the integration of its Halbis and Sinopia brands

  • Interviews

    Five years on

    April 2011 (Magazine)

    When Peter Wilby begins our conversation by remarking on Stone Harbor Investment Partners’ imminent fifth birthday, it is as if, stepping back, he suddenly realises what a thrill ride it has been.

  • Interviews

    Breaking the bonds

    March 2011 (Magazine)

    Last month’s Strategically Speaking looked at how the dynamics of ageing, pension fund decumulation and tighter capital adequacy had influenced Schroders’ transformation from UK equities investor to global multi-asset manager.

  • Interviews

    Positioned for the new era in pensions

    February 2011 (Magazine)

    There are some clear long-term trends in pension asset management in Europe. Collective is giving way to individual provision. Defined benefit (DB) schemes are closing, crystalising liabilities and deficits, and implementing LDI programmes. This, together with accounting and capital adequacy standards and the decumulation phase of an ageing demographic, is pushing funds into fixed income. Where growth assets are still required, investors look beyond domestic markets because growth is expected to come from emerging economies.

  • Interviews

    Consolidating and concentrating

    February 2011 (Magazine)

    There has been a lot of change at Finasta Asset Management over the last two years. In 2009 parent company Finasta Group was sold by Lithuanian heavyweight Invalda to Bank Snoras, which had its own asset management outfit. This division was merged with Finasta Asset Management at the beginning of 2010, creating a rather odd-looking entity that was ripe for ‘synergies’.

  • Interviews

    Latin translation

    January 2011 (Magazine)

    “We have a saying in Spain,” says BBVA’s head of global asset management Luisa Gómez Bravo. “‘No vendas la piel del oso antes de haberlo cazado’.” Don’t sell the bearskin until you’ve hunted the bear. The proverb comes in response to the question of how the €140bn asset management unit of one of the biggest global banking brands remains so little-known among Europe’s institutional investors.

  • Interviews

    Winton’s global equity strategy

    December 2010 (Magazine)

    The West London offices of Winton Capital Management, best known for the diversified managed futures programme that has helped it grow into one of Europe’s biggest hedge funds, feel more like a university campus than an HQ of an asset management firm.

  • Interviews

    The lion that’s finding its courage

    November 2010 (Magazine)

    The nightmare for any fund management firm is losing key managers whose clients follow them out of the door. It can tear apart a firm’s credibility, leading to further fund outflows and a further loss of credibility – a ‘death spiral’ that can demolish once mighty firms.

  • Interviews

    Bridges to somewhere

    November 2010 (Magazine)

    Mark Weisdorf knows a thing or two about how and why pension funds invest in infrastructure assets. Before joining JP Morgan Asset Management (JPMAM) to set up its infrastructure investments group in 2006 he developed the real estate, private equity and infrastructure strategies for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s CA$130bn (€92bn) portfolio, experience that led to his founding Mark Weisdorf Associates, a consultancy dedicated to advising institutional investors on their allocations to these asset classes.

  • Interviews

    Facing forward, facing outward

    October 2010 (Magazine)

    Janus was the Roman god of doorways, and by extension of beginnings and endings. Double-faced, he looked both forward and backward, which is why he lent his name to the month of January. Janus Capital Group also takes its name from this god, but rather than facing forward and backward, ...

  • Interviews

    From growth to profitability

    September 2010 (Magazine)

    Arjun Divecha likes to talk personal hygiene. In particular he likes to tell a story about HengAn International, China’s leading producer of sanitary towels and diapers.

  • Interviews

    Munsters targets pension market

    July 2010 (Magazine)

    Robeco is boosting its efforts to cater to the Dutch pensions industry. This is not a huge surprise, considering the fact that CEO Roderick Munsters joined the asset manager from pension giant APG, Mariska van der Westen and Liam Kennedy write

  • Interviews

    Beware falling knives

    July 2010 (Magazine)

    The Mudrick Capital Management project was set in motion in 2008 to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – “the largest supply of over-leveraged corporations ever seen” combined with the most severe recession since the 1930s “has kicked off a distressed cycle that will be unprecedented in terms of length and depth of supply”, its website declares.

  • Interviews

    Steady hand in a storm

    June 2010 (Magazine)

    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.

  • New birth for Neuberger
    Interviews

    New birth for Neuberger

    May 2010 (Magazine)

    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.”

  • Interviews

    The full toolbox

    April 2010 (Magazine)

    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).

  • Interviews

    Modelling talent – and tails

    March 2010 (Magazine)

    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.

  • In your style
    Interviews

    In your style

    February 2010 (Magazine)

    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.”

  • Interviews

    Concentrating on value

    January 2010 (Magazine)

    “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.”