Analysis

by Chris Bedingfield* The world has changed dramatically for asset managers in the past decade. For those who believe they have something different to offer the market, it has perhaps never been harder to start up on their own. From super funds insourcing their asset management capabilities, to the chicken-and-egg circle of research houses who…

by Greg Bright Ken Marshman, the independent chair of Rest, called them the ‘matchmaker’, ‘the fiancé’ and ‘Muriel’. They are three people who have been involved in no less than 13 super fund mergers. In the current climate, their experiences should be noted by all funds. Marshman, also a former chief executive of JANA Investment…

Global financial market infrastructure firm Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has laid out a chapter-and-verse governance model for the nascent blockchain universe. In a just-published white paper produced with consultancy giant, Accenture, DTCC establishes eight commandments for running ‘permissioned’ blockchains – also known as distributed ledger technology (DLT). Unlike the headline-grabbing blockchain antics of…

by David Chaplin* Later this year, probably, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) of New Zealand will release the findings of a long-awaited review of the country’s custody sector. Securities servicing, as it should be known, has been long neglected by the NZ regulator. The review – understood to have been outsourced to consultancy firm PwC…

Value will come back. It must do. It’s the most persistent of styles, dating back to the research of Benjamin Graham in the 1930s. Its underperformance cannot go on much longer. Surely. Reece Birtles, admittedly biased towards the style, provides a compelling argument as to why the time is now to dive back in. Birtles,…

by David Chaplin BlackRock has laid out the case for a coordinated fiscal and monetary shock policy to defibrillate the global economy as it struggles to register a pulse. In a paper published last week, the BlackRock Investment Institute argues that with both monetary and fiscal losing potency, more radical approaches – such as the…

These stories, thankfully, don’t come along too often. But they do come along. Here’s an entertaining – assuming you weren’t an investor – example of greed, hubris and a lavish lifestyle. And what better place to bring those factors together than in California? In its latest client note, Castle Hall, the global due diligence firm,…

John Peterson, an institutional advisor and investor who runs the Peterson Research Institute, has been monitoring like-for-like actual investment options offered by two big super funds, which track the relative performances of active versus indexed strategies. Here is his latest update, which shows active options widening their lead over passive during longer periods. In a…

The big super funds which take part on National Australia’s Bank’s two-yearly survey about currency management have exhibited a significant upgrade in their views and intent with respect to foreign currency. “It’s no longer a binary – passive or active – decision. It is much more nuanced and integrated in the whole investment process. There…

While quantitative managers, on average, had a rough trot during 2018, including the popular alternative risk premia strategy managers, new work indicates that certain styles will be more resilient in the current market climate, performing better in the event of investor ‘crowding’. A study, by Nick Baltas, head of R&D for systematic trading strategies at…

In a sample using UK stocks, Axioma, the global investment risk advisory firm, points back to some tried and true fundamental beliefs but adds a couple of new ones to assess the likely future behaviour of factors. The firm is rolling out an updated risk model (Version 4), starting with the UK in a blog…

In what a specialist consultant and Bitcoin trading firm, Goldbaum & Partners, sees as the development of an emerging asset class in ‘digital assets’, there may well be a challenge to the characteristics exhibited over the years by gold. It comes at a time when gold is being spruiked as a legitimate investment for institutions….