All Strategically Speaking articles – Page 10
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Interviews
Concentrating on value
“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.”
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Interviews
Concentrating on value
“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.
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Interviews
A Hamburg asset
The phlegmatic Hamburgers are often compared with the British by dint of their conservative outlook and controlled disposition. Perhaps no wonder that a Hamburg institution like Berenberg Bank should already count a UK local government pension fund among its asset management clients – and that it should be hunting for more such clients outside the German speaking world.
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Interviews
American half-century
f you are wondering why it took 50 years for American Century Investments to open its first offices outside the US, it is instructive to look at who owns the business. Among the partners, primary control is held by the cancer research group associated with the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in the firm’s home town of Kansas City. About eight years ago American Century’s founder, Jim Stowers, now an octagenarian cancer survivor, donated almost all of his wealth to establish the institute. Since 2000, 40% of the firm’s profits have been paid as an annual dividend to the institute – a total of more than $750m.
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Interviews
Hedge fund hermeneutics
Although pension funds and their consultants are weaning themselves off their obsession with three-year track records, few would choose to park $1.3bn with a brand new fund of hedge funds – even if its founding partners bring two decades of experience from hedge fund stalwarts like Olympia, Pioneer and Momentum.
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Interviews
From silos to solutions
BlackRock has been active in fiduciary management since 2005, when it purchased the internal asset management operation of the Philips pension fund in the Netherlands and was awarded a fiduciary mandate to manage the assets.
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Interviews
From silos to solutions
The announcement in mid-June that Barclays had accepted BlackRock’s offer for its asset management arm, Barclays Global Investors (BGI) – to be recommended to shareholders in August 2009 – set the media and industry analysts off on the challenging task of trying to find the pitfalls. All mergers present difficulties, particularly when they are on this scale, but it is difficult to imagine a better fit.
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Interviews
Multiplying the multi-boutique
As a giant among asset managers describing itself as “multi-boutique”, one might expect BNY Mellon Asset Management (BNYMAM) to be scouring this consolidating industry, chequebook in hand. The recent announcement that it will buy Insight Investment Management from Lloyds Banking Group for £235m (€273m) shows that it is indeed in the market
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Interviews
Bigger in Japan
On 30 July Sumitomo Trust and Banking Company, the second biggest money manager in Japan, with assets under management at ¥26trn (€192.3bn), bought Nikko Asset Management, Japan’s seventh largest, with just over ¥9trn. It was second only to BlackRock-BGI in terms of this year’s biggest asset management M&A deals and will create Japan’s new number one, and yet media coverage in Europe was curiously muted.
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Interviews
IAM what IAM
It’s been an eventful few years for fund of hedge funds International Asset Management (IAM).
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InterviewsThe institutional path
SAM was founded in 1995 as Sustainable Asset Management. In the wake of the current financial crisis and the appointment of Sander van Eijkern as CEO in January, new ventures are on the horizon for the Swiss-based investment manager.
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Interviews
Revolution for survival
Jan Straatman has chosen a quote from Charles Darwin as the motto for his plans to restructure €330bn Dutch investment management giant ING: “It is not the strongest of the species which survive, nor the most intelligent, but those most able to change.”
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InterviewsBig in Japan – ready for Europe?
Having been through its own painful credit crunch during the ‘lost decade’ of the 1990s, Japan entered the current global version with government, corporate and household debt at relatively healthy levels.
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InterviewsKeeping it real
Ask pension fund managers what are the risks that keep them awake at night, and they will probably start with longevity.Close behind will be interest rates and inflation.
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