China is seen as the jewel in the asset manager’s crown after foreign ownership restrictions in the industry were relaxed in April. Global firms including BlackRock, Fidelity International and Vanguard have applied to set up wholly-owned mutual fund units in China, hoping to tap the country’s fast-growing USD2.6 trillion retail fund market.
The European asset management industry is back on track for another year of growth, according to industry body The European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) – with assets under management rebounding strongly after being hit by the coronavirus crisis in the first quarter of 2020.
Financial stability across the world could be under threat from climate change, with the Financial Stability Board (FSB) warning that environmental deterioration could hit asset prices, financial liquidity, and borrower creditworthiness.
Institutional investors allocated USD220.5 billion to fixed income strategies in the third quarter of 2020, with most of this going toward US bond managers, as rising coronavirus cases and the run-up to the US election kept appetites for risk low.
Pension funds in the UK are being urged to step up their infrastructure investment, as speakers at a pensions conference this week emphasised the need to preserve the long-term sustainability of the UK economy.
By Francesc Balcells, CIO of EM Debt at FIM Partners, an institutional asset manager focused on emerging markets.
The FED and other central banks launch massive asset purchases, equities and global bonds rally, the market piles on inflation hedges, industrial commodities strengthen, and the dollar dips.
Diversity and inclusion have become a priority for institutional investors in the UK, two thirds of which say their firms are excluding companies from their investment portfolios if they fail to meet certain thresholds.
The industry network 100 Women in Finance is putting female founders and asset managers in front of the world’s largest allocators in its virtual Global FundWomen Week in November, which it says is the largest ever event of its kind.
Almost all of the largest hubs for green finance are concentrated within Western Europe, a biannual index shows, with Amsterdam, Zurich, and London continuing to lead efforts to finance a sustainable future.
Institutional investors are spending 30 per cent of their time on tasks that do not add value to the investment process, including searching for documents on shared drives, and typing up handwritten notes from meetings.
By Joshua D Kestler, Global Head of HedgeMark, BNY Mellon – In the 12 years since the 2008 financial crisis, many large institutional investors have adopted Dedicated Managed Account (DMA) structures in order to address the challenges in commingled hedge funds that were exposed during the crisis (click here for a brief refresher). These investors were well-prepared to more effectively manage their portfolios through the market volatility which has resulted from the Covid-19 pandemic while eliminating many of the structural risks that can be exacerbated during a crisis scenario.
The scale of the corporate restructuring needs globally “could exceed the previous peak seen after the 2008 global financial crisis”, according to a recent note from BlackRock.
