Is the financial services sector serving the public interest?

Fiduciary law, which creates the boundaries and rules for asset owners managing other people’s money, is evolving. The short-termism, misaligned incentives and complex and over-supply of services that characterises financial services, is under fire. Regulators around the world are increasingly looking at how to change the behaviour and supply chain dynamics in the industry, and … Read more

The impact of the mega manager

The impact of size is a delicate point for asset managers. For specialist asset classes, and boutique managers, being small and nimble can be a source of alpha. On the other hand, being large can reduce fees and increase innovation and product offering. But now there is evidence to show that the emergence of the … Read more

The power of knowledge management

Funds management is often discussed in the context of it being part art and part science, however most of the literature centres around the science, the finance, of funds management. The premise of active management is that skills and knowledge are paramount to capturing excess returns above the benchmark. But despite this premise, little is … Read more

The contested role of asset consultants

Asset consultants are a key part of the investment chain, providing small funds with services that include decision making processes and strategic asset allocation, and for larger funds traditionally playing a key role in manager and strategy selection. But a study by Gordon Clark and Ashby Monk, which is part of a broader look by … Read more

Demystifying private equity

US public pension funds, on average, have around 9.4 per cent allocated to private equity but for many public funds monitoring the firms that manage these investments – including the transparency of underlying investments, fees, performance and benchmarking – as well justifying these investments to boards and stakeholders, takes up more than 10 per cent … Read more

Smart credit investing: harvesting factor premiums

Although most factor research focuses on the equity market, the concept and benefits of factor investing apply equally well to the corporate bond market. A smart way of investing is combining the factors into a multi-factor credit portfolio in order to diversify across factors. A multi-factor portfolio retains the high Sharpe ratio of the individual … Read more