All Strategically Speaking articles – Page 9
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Interviews
‘Adjacency’, or the art of step-by-step
It is tempting, just because it is so good at it, to think of the $11bn (€7.8bn) London-based hedge fund manager CQS as a credit specialist. But founder Michael Hintze is keen to emphasise its broader strengths. “We are a big hedge fund, but we do more than simply provide absolute returns in credit,” he says. “Nowadays we are a global multi-strategy, multi-asset management firm providing hedge fund, long only and bespoke solutions for clients.”
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Interviews
Across the Gulf… and into the world
Limestone Asset Management launched its first fund, the New Europe Socially Responsible fund, in July 2008. Great timing: it was down 47% by December. But, that was 2.6 percentage points better than its benchmark, the Stoxx EU Enlarged Total Market index. And it made quite a comeback: when it ended 2009 up 83.1%, it left the index trailing by 42 percentage points – outperformance which it has built on since.
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Interviews
‘Risk is everything to us’
Asset managers’ products rarely surprise anyone. You’re an equities specialist? You’ll have US, European, UK, emerging markets funds, maybe Japan. Fixed income? I’ll choose from your treasuries, gilts and Eurozone products, investment grade and high yield, maybe local currency emerging markets. There might even be some convertibles tucked away somewhere.
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Interviews
Accent on EM capability
Rudolf Apenbrink, HSBC Global Asset Management’s new EMEA CEO, outlined his firm’s strategy to Liam Kennedy following the integration of its Halbis and Sinopia brands
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Interviews
Five years on
When Peter Wilby begins our conversation by remarking on Stone Harbor Investment Partners’ imminent fifth birthday, it is as if, stepping back, he suddenly realises what a thrill ride it has been.
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Interviews
Breaking the bonds
Last month’s Strategically Speaking looked at how the dynamics of ageing, pension fund decumulation and tighter capital adequacy had influenced Schroders’ transformation from UK equities investor to global multi-asset manager.
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Interviews
Positioned for the new era in pensions
There are some clear long-term trends in pension asset management in Europe. Collective is giving way to individual provision. Defined benefit (DB) schemes are closing, crystalising liabilities and deficits, and implementing LDI programmes. This, together with accounting and capital adequacy standards and the decumulation phase of an ageing demographic, is pushing funds into fixed income. Where growth assets are still required, investors look beyond domestic markets because growth is expected to come from emerging economies.
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Interviews
Consolidating and concentrating
There has been a lot of change at Finasta Asset Management over the last two years. In 2009 parent company Finasta Group was sold by Lithuanian heavyweight Invalda to Bank Snoras, which had its own asset management outfit. This division was merged with Finasta Asset Management at the beginning of 2010, creating a rather odd-looking entity that was ripe for ‘synergies’.
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Interviews
Latin translation
“We have a saying in Spain,” says BBVA’s head of global asset management Luisa Gómez Bravo. “‘No vendas la piel del oso antes de haberlo cazado’.” Don’t sell the bearskin until you’ve hunted the bear. The proverb comes in response to the question of how the €140bn asset management unit of one of the biggest global banking brands remains so little-known among Europe’s institutional investors.
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Interviews
Winton’s global equity strategy
The West London offices of Winton Capital Management, best known for the diversified managed futures programme that has helped it grow into one of Europe’s biggest hedge funds, feel more like a university campus than an HQ of an asset management firm.
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Interviews
The lion that’s finding its courage
The nightmare for any fund management firm is losing key managers whose clients follow them out of the door. It can tear apart a firm’s credibility, leading to further fund outflows and a further loss of credibility – a ‘death spiral’ that can demolish once mighty firms.
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Interviews
Bridges to somewhere
Mark Weisdorf knows a thing or two about how and why pension funds invest in infrastructure assets. Before joining JP Morgan Asset Management (JPMAM) to set up its infrastructure investments group in 2006 he developed the real estate, private equity and infrastructure strategies for the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s CA$130bn (€92bn) portfolio, experience that led to his founding Mark Weisdorf Associates, a consultancy dedicated to advising institutional investors on their allocations to these asset classes.
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Interviews
Facing forward, facing outward
Janus was the Roman god of doorways, and by extension of beginnings and endings. Double-faced, he looked both forward and backward, which is why he lent his name to the month of January. Janus Capital Group also takes its name from this god, but rather than facing forward and backward, ...
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Interviews
From growth to profitability
Arjun Divecha likes to talk personal hygiene. In particular he likes to tell a story about HengAn International, China’s leading producer of sanitary towels and diapers.
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Interviews
Munsters targets pension market
Robeco is boosting its efforts to cater to the Dutch pensions industry. This is not a huge surprise, considering the fact that CEO Roderick Munsters joined the asset manager from pension giant APG, Mariska van der Westen and Liam Kennedy write
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Interviews
Beware falling knives
The Mudrick Capital Management project was set in motion in 2008 to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – “the largest supply of over-leveraged corporations ever seen” combined with the most severe recession since the 1930s “has kicked off a distressed cycle that will be unprecedented in terms of length and depth of supply”, its website declares.
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Interviews
Steady hand in a storm
These are interesting times at Copenhagen’s BankInvest. Its 20-strong global equities team was recently reduced to 17 as its head, David Dalgas, resigned, followed by chief portfolio managers Klaus Ingemann Nielsen and Kenneth Graversen. The team still boasts an average of 10 years’ experience, and it maintains that the resignations would not lead directly to changes in its (low turnover, fundamentals-based) global equity portfolios.
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InterviewsNew birth for Neuberger
I first met Dik van Lomwel high up on a deserted floor of 25 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, almost exactly one year ago. The employees of Neuberger Berman, bought by Lehman Brothers in 2000, were the only people left, and the place had a melancholy air. “It’s a tragedy, what happened here,” he said. “Lehman was a genuinely nice place to work – how many firms on the Street had senior people who stuck around for so long? But now we have the opportunity to take that forward into the new firm.”
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Interviews
The full toolbox
Think Lyxor Asset Management’s brand-defining products and the word ‘barbell’ comes to mind: on one end, Lyxor ETFs and other index products (the cheapest and most passive vehicles); at the other, the market-leading hedge fund managed account platform (the most expensive and active investment strategies).
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Interviews
Modelling talent – and tails
We all know that finding alpha is tough. But managing a portfolio of alpha sources is also trickier than it seems. Many assume that a hedge fund manager’s idiosyncratic risk has a stable relationship with his beta exposures (which is unsatisfactory); and that idiosyncratic risk is normally-distributed and, by definition, non-correlated with other idiosyncratic risks (which is potentially disastrous). Very few have made significant progress beyond these assumptions, but it should come as no surprise that one of those few is fund of hedge funds Caliburn Capital Partners – because building portfolios of alpha is its raison d’être.
