1. Economist provides a thorough overview of the alternative investments market in Brazil. Money is pouring in as the commodities boom continues, the government creates an encouraging regulatory/ reporting framework and the stock exchange provides a growing market for liquid instruments and IPO exits. Opportunities remain limited primarily to equity-related strategies (like much of the [...]

1. Humanizing the business 2. PEOPLE & PHILOSOPHY
3. Branding
4. Product
5. Strategy & decision making
6. Clients
7. Marketing & PR
8. Investment process
9. Regulation & compliance Challenge 2: People & philosophy A typical asset manager’s flagship pitch-book will follow the 4 Ps structure: Philosophy, [...]

1. HUMANIZING THE BUSINESS
2. People & philosophy
3. Branding
4. Product
5. Strategy & decision making
6. Clients
7. Marketing & PR
8. Investment process
9. Regulation & compliance

Challenge 1. Humanizing the business
At the risk of over-generalizing, American asset management firms are more [...]

1. Buttonwood’s (Economist) well supported argument for a survivorship bias at play in pension funds’ assumptions of equity risk premia.

http://econ.st/dLZBxo

2. Rebecca Christie/ Ian Katz (Bloomberg) point to potential future regulation by the Fed of hedge funds, private equity funds and insurers. This was foreshadowed by a 80 page preliminary draft of recommendations issued [...]

If you believe the trade press, then you probably think that the fund of hedge funds (FoHFs) industry is in its death throes. We are all familiar by now with the headlines (covered in a recent post) as well as the statistics:

1. the number of FoHFs has fallen by a quarter since 2007 with [...]

1. Fran Denmark’s (Institutional Investor) excellent overview of the move by insurance companies to increasingly outsource management of insurance assets. The outsource CIO model is becoming increasingly popular for institutional investors (not just endowments such as Rensselaer Polytechnic). http://bit.ly/fuePbH

2. Buttonwood’s (Economist) thought provoking sketch of the symbiotic relationship between government and pensions [...]

“Fund of funds are a cancer on the institutional-investor world…

Consultants make money by giving advice to as many people as possible. But you outperform by finding inefficiencies most of the market has not yet uncovered. So consultants ultimately end up doing a disservice to investors.”

David Swensen (CIO Yale Endowment and author [...]