Posts tagged 'Asset Management'

The great rotation: Not so great, and not even really a rotation

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 05 12:14 | Comment |

The ‘great rotation’ from bonds into equities: a few weeks ago it was looking like it might be seriously on. Even Albert Edwards sort of kind of said equities were cheap. And Ray Dalio said it is happening, too.

But there are a bunch of reasons why it doesn’t seem to be quite such a sure thing, at least for now. Read more

Aladdin’s bond cave

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| Apr 12 2012 16:09 | Comment |

Bit of a Volcker Rule/whither market-making talker from the WSJ… BlackRock is back touting post-bank ‘internal’ trading for its clients.

Feels like it’s been building a trading platform since forever actually… Read more

Deutsche Bank Asset Management auction falters

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 09 2012 05:20 | Comment |

The auction process to sell Deutsche Bank Asset Management is faltering after JPMorgan and State Street withdrew from the bidding, making it more likely the bank will have to break up the business as part of a prolonged sale of the assets. Deutsche Bank had raced ahead with the sale process in the past week, narrowing interest from a wide range of potential bidders to a shortlist of a half a dozen, before the leading contenders withdrew. Ameriprise, another candidate to buy the business, is baulking at the price and could soon withdraw, the FT says, citing people familiar with the situation. Read more

Goldman beefs up asset management business

Kate is FT AV’s Asia Correspondent. She joined FT Alphaville in mid-2011 after carrying out various roles in the FT’s London office since 2005: interactive editor, companies reporter, and founding editor of the FT’s Energy Source blog.

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| Feb 08 2012 04:11 | Comment |

Goldman Sachs is to beef up its asset management business as part of a strategy to tap into the retirement savings of a wave of ageing baby boomers, says the FT. Goldman Sachs Asset Management, a unit of the Wall Street bank, has agreed to buy Dwight Asset Management for an undisclosed sum. Dwight, which is based in Vermont, specialises in so-called “stable value” money management, which aims to deliver safe and consistent returns to investors in a similar way to money market funds.  Dwight has $42bn of assets under supervision, and is now on track to become part of GSAM in the second quarter of the year. Goldman is buying the firm from Old Mutual Asset Management, part of the London-based savings group, Old Mutual. Read more

Shadow banking and the seven collateral miners

Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

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| Dec 09 2011 09:48 | Comment |

In the words of Goldman Doc, Morgan Grumpy, JP Happy, Bank of Sleepy, Barclays Bashful, Sneezy Citi, and Dopey Deutsche:

We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig from early morn till night
We dig dig dig dig dig dig dig up everything in sight
We dig up diamonds by the score
A thousand rubies, sometimes more
But we don’t know what we dig ‘em for
We dig dig dig a-dig dig Read more

Calpers’ report critical of asset managers

Tracy Alloway used to be deputy editor of FT Alphaville. Here she learned the details of derivatives, the absurdities of accounting and the various structures of ... erm ... structured finance. She now covers big US banks for the FT paper, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. She pops up on FT Alphaville every once in a while.

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| Mar 16 2011 09:27 | Comment |

A scathing report prepared for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System has found that asset managers paid about $180m over the past decade to win business at the largest US public pension fund, the FT reports. As state and federal investigations into the use of so-called “placement agents” continue, the conclusions of the 17-month review recommended policy changes at the pension fund and point to further action at Calpers and other funds. Bloomberg adds that Calpers said it will take steps to prevent investment decisions from being corrupted by middlemen. Read more

Why Libya’s sovereign fund is being frozen

Joseph joined FT Alphaville way back in March 2010. He likes all the politically and legally fiddly bits of finance. He also likes credit, rates, global macro, tail risk, and all that stuff. (You should email him story ideas. He’ll take anything.)

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| Mar 04 2011 10:15 | Comment |

Austria was the latest country to freeze assets linked to the Libyan Investment Authority on Friday, FT Alphaville reports. Or more specifically — assets tied to Mustafa Zarti, who is the LIA’s deputy chief. And a close friend of Saif Gaddafi. Which tells you exactly why an asset freeze initially targeted at the Gaddafi family has now also brought down a sovereign wealth fund. Given the LIA’s size, liquidity, and counterparty exposure to several western companies, this is a big deal — and so far as we still know, an unprecedented occurrence in the land of SWFs. Read more

The privatisation of liquidity ops

Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

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| Dec 17 2010 08:30 | Comment |

FT Alphaville has been researching the issue of so-called ‘liquidity transfers’ ever since we first came across the matter in Life & Pension Risk in October.

As Risk noted at the time, there’s been an increasing trend for banks to swap their illiquid Asset-Backed Securities (ABS)-style assets for much more liquid securities held by pension and insurance funds via extremely long repo arrangements. Read more

Double agents in asset management

Izabella Kaminska joined FT Alphaville in October 2008. Before that she worked as a producer at CNBC, a natural gas reporter at Platts and an associate editor of BP's internal magazine.

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| Nov 01 2010 09:45 | Comment |

It may not be the workings of an Anna Chapman-style Russian sleeper cell.

But it is a case involving suspected double-agents. In the asset management industry. Read more

BlueBay jumps on $1.5bn RBC deal

| Oct 19 2010 05:17 | Comment |

Royal Bank of Canada has struck a £963m ($1.5bn) deal to buy BlueBay Asset Management, reports the FT. London-listed BlueBay’s shares jumped by 30% on news of RBC’s 485p per share offer, capping a turbulent year for the UK bond and fixed income asset manager and netting millions for its founders Hugh Willis and Mark Poole. At a a 29.1% premium to BlueBay’s Friday closing price the deal will hand Willis, chief executive, and Poole, chief investment officer, a windfall of £81m each from their 8.5% stakes only months after they each sold £21m of shares into the market. After number-crunching, Lex notes that the price is not a particularly high premium to pay for control of BlueBay and its ‘rarity value’. Read more