Performance Magazine - Issue 18

Asset Management – a Profession with Identity

We speak, and analyze and work a lot with the term asset management – sometimes investment management (is there a difference and if so which?) – and yet we are generally concerned with its effects, its outcomes, its facets rather than its essence per se. That we are concerned with outcomes is only right, one of the signs of asset management coming of age is that it starts to sell solutions and not products.

On the downside, it clearly is not held in high esteem by the general public as a whole. In surveys, asset managers are considered lower in the eyes of those responding than bankers or more or less any other profession. It is slightly hard to understand this poor ranking given that it is more than probable that few if any of that same general public could readily define what an asset manager is or what she or he does. So dire is this perception of the profession that some industry professionals themselves have publicly stated that there is little if any hope of improving that image, a view not shared by all thankfully. Nevertheless seeking to redress the balance is likely to be an uphill task.

We have always sought to look ahead in Performance, but in this edition we have taken a step further down that path. We consider asset management, in its broadest form, in the context of pension investing, of insurance investing, as a part of the global market and a tool for geo-political change. We consider the inter-relationship between core investment management and those services it needs to function, and we look at those initiatives that are likely to come to further shape the future of the profession whether we like them or not.

Asset management has its role to play; it may never be cherished in the hearts of the greater public but its practitioners will be satisfied if using the tools at their disposal, and their skill and judgement they can in future years look back on how the issues that are looming, issues of retirement provision and pensions, issues of funding long term economic growth through wealth creation, have been addressed and conclude “job done” .

In this issue

• In focus
  Interview — Enrico Turchi, The search for a scalable framework
• Private Equity as a catalyst for growth in the EU
  
• A holistic approach to regulatory watch

• Capital Markets Union
  Will it be a game-changer?
  
• AIFMD Reporting survey
  What lies ahead, what went before?
  
• AIFMD - Time for reflection and extension
  ESMA release their advice and opinion
  
• Money Market Funds
  US 2014 rules v EU draft 2015 rules
  
• Global risk management survey, ninth edition
  Operating in the new normal: increased regulation and heightened expectations
  
• Asset management for insurers
  A brave new world
  
• When A, C, and H spell “Connect”…
  
• Asset servicing
  Finding the silver linings of regulatory clouds
  
• Deloitte 2014 European real estate investment management survey among asset managers and servicers
  Forecast? Mostly sunny, with scattered clouds
  
• How can investment managers supercharge their alpha?
  
• Link'n Learn
  Webinars - Programme 2015