Since the emergence of “Modern Portfolio Theory” and the “Capital Asset Pricing Model” in the late 1960s, institutional investors have taken a quantitatively driven approach to portfolio construction, looking to create portfolio diversification and obtain better risk-adjusted returns by balancing their asset-class exposures. This journey has seen several important advancements in thinking about how to optimally achieve desired results.
Funds that want to take the total portfolio approach first need to get the total portfolio view. To do that they not only need data – and lots of it – but a rock-solid understanding of exactly how they’re going to use it.
Nikki Smith back to London for Deutsche Bank role
Pictured: Nikki Smith
After about 20 years in Australia, Nikki Smith, a securities services and funds management marketer, has returned to London to join Deutsche Bank’s securities services division as a director.
She has taken a new role within Deutsche as sector specialist relationship manager/sales for financial institutions. She said the role was evolving but it was envisaged it would cover relationships to strategically deliver the whole of the bank’s capabilities to clients.
“I get to tie all aspects of my career to date with the challenge of building new relationships in Europe,” she said last week.
Smith most recently spent just over two years with Perennial Investment Partners in the institutional relationships and sales area, based in Sydney. Prior to that she had a short stint at Westpac as a director of the institutional bank.
Most of her securities services experience, however, came from roles at JP Morgan Securities Services, also based in Sydney, over about 11 years up until 2009. In 2007 she was promoted to executive director in charge of the client services team of about 120 staff across 10 countries in the Asia Pacific region. In this role she implemented JP Morgan’s first in-country client service team in China.
