FROM THE PRESS RELEASE DESK THIS WEEK…
People moves
BNY Mellon Investment Management has appointed Kenzo Tanaka as Tokyo-based head of institutional sales for pensions in Japan. In this newly created role, Tanaka will be responsible for developing and growing relationships with Japanese corporate pension funds along with enhancing relationships with pension consultants. He will report to Satoshi Nishimoto, managing director and co-head of institutional sales and marketing division for pensions. Before BNY Mellon, Tanaka was at Nissay Asset Management, where he was general manager for institutional distribution. He also held various roles at Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets, Merrill Lynch Japan Securities and Man Investments Securities in Japan…
VP Bank Group has appointed Paul Arni as its new CEO, effective 1 October. Until then, Urs Monstein, chief operating officer at VP Bank, will continue to exercise the CEO function on an interim basis. Before his new role, Arni was at Deutsche Bank, where he was head of wealth management for Switzerland. Before that, he was market head for Zurich and deputy regional manager for Switzerland at Bank Julius Baer and global chief operating officer for private banking at Credit Suisse…
Institutions
Aberdeen Standard Investments and Beijing-headquartered Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) have forged a strategic partnership to develop debt capital markets for infrastructure, drive responsible investing in fixed income and build a sustainable ESG ecosystem in emerging markets. The partnership entails ASI managing the $500m AIIB Asia ESG Enhanced Credit Managed Portfolio on behalf of AIIB, which will be comprised of Asian infrastructure-related bonds. The portfolio was approved by the AIIB board of directors in December and ASI was awarded the contract to manage the portfolio through a competitive bidding process…
Fixed income allocations from sovereign wealth funds and central banks globally have increased to 33% this year compared to 30% last year, while allocations to equities fell to 30% from 33%, according to an Invesco report. However, Asia-Pacific-based sovereigns have shown a different trend from their global peers. Around 33% of them plan to continue or increase their equity exposure in the next 12 months, which compares to 22% globally, and only 6% are planning to decrease exposure, versus 24% globally…
ESG
Man Group has launched a proprietary ESG analytics tool for its portfolio managers. The system applies advanced data science and quantitative analysis to disaggregate multi-vendor ESG datasets, allowing the tool to generate a holistic score for the sustainability profile and impact of a business. Datasets from three ESG data providers – Sustainalytics, MSCI and Trucost – are also integrated into the platform, allowing portfolio managers to evaluate a wide variety of company-specific ESG metrics. The system also has an alert function with the ability to set limits on changes in individual or benchmark scores, which allows fund managers to closely monitor and track movements. It also displays voting activity to reinforce fund level engagement and active ownership by Man Group’s investment teams…
MSCI has launched an ESG rating system for mutual funds and ETFs. The rating system will include around 32,000 funds and ETFs in the equity and fixed income universe and will rank them from AAA (leader) to CCC (laggard). The rating will be based on the weighted average score of the holdings of the fund or ETF. MSCI then assesses the ESG momentum to gain insight into the fund’s ESG track record.
New rating system
Morningstar will be making modifications in its Analyst Rating system, which rates fund products as Gold, Silver, Bronze, Neutral and Negative. The current assessment framework, which includes five criteria (people, process, parent, performance and price), will be trimmed down to three, which are people, process and parent. Performance and price will cease to be standalone pillars, as analysts will incorporate their performance assessment into the other pillars and express price differently. Currently, a product’s fee rank within its peer group drives its price rating. Under the new methodology, analysts will deduct a strategy’s expenses from their estimate of how much value it can add before fees, with that estimate based in part on the people, process and parent assessments they conduct. The new methodology will also be setting a higher bar for funds to earn a Gold, Silver or Bronze rating…
Hedge funds
The global hedge fund industry has rebounded this year, returning an average of 7.16% as of the end of June after being in negative territory in 2018, according to an Evestment report. All hedge fund strategies were positive this year, with long/short equity and event driven funds being the best performers during the period…
