Last week Strategic Insight published David and Goliath in the Global Asset Management Industry, an in-depth look at the fastest growing boutique investment firms around the world, and common success factors from Asia to Europe and the US.
We found firms from all parts of the world, covering a range of asset classes and investment strategies – however, despite those differences, a common theme for success the visibility of the fund managers along with proactive communication and information delivery.
One of the exceptions to that rule from our data, away from a star manager approach, was ETF Securities’ physical gold fund. Here, the theme, performance and low cost package were the “star” message.
In the coming weeks we will examine the other side of the spectrum, the Goliaths of asset management. One of them is Vanguard, with a team-approach around the index message – the Vanguard Quantitative Equity Group (QEG) for instance manages the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index, the largest index fund in the US with over $170 billion total assets.
Still, despite the team management approach even Vanguard had a star in John Bogle, who in a most vocal manner dominated the industry discussion around low cost fund management and indexing for decades.
Ultimately, while managers out of necessity or by design often focus on either a star manager or a team approach, the lines of demarcation are blurry. Star managers rely on a team and team-focused firms are finding figureheads to get key messages across.
Also, the data shows a wide range of winners, across regions, asset classes and investment approaches.
Results from Strategic Insight’s over one thousand interviews with institutional and intermediary asset holders around the world in recent years show that in the end only two things matter: clear positioning of product and processes, and a simple message.
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Warren Enskat Group 