Funds Hub

10 years of fund industry evolution: Lipper

“A game of two halves” is a footballing cliché in the UK, but was particularly apt for the European funds industry in 2011. The stock market falls that began in July not only ended the healthy sales activity that had started the year, but triggered a wave of redemptions that rolled through the industry. While these outflows ebbed slightly in the final quarter of the year, there were few who did not feel the cold chill of investors withdrawing from mutual funds by the year-end.

Net sales of long-term funds (i.e. excluding money market funds) in 2010 (305.8 billion euros) exceeded not just those of 2009 (257.7 billion), but also the level achieved in pre-crisis 2006 (265.9 billion). Expectations were therefore high when the first half of 2011 saw inflows of 96.1 billion euros, but this was followed by outflows of 155.9 billion, so that the year as a whole ended in the red (-59.8 billion) for only the second time in a decade (the 2008 total was -391.4 billion euros).

Giving investors the motivation and confidence to move money out of deposits and into funds amid the ongoing political and economic maelstrom remains a crucial challenge for asset managers.

But a longer term view is also useful in fully understanding the current status of the industry and the dynamics that have been at work to shape its current structure.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

2011 saw a slight contraction in the number of funds for only the second time in the past decade. The last time this happened (in 2009) the net reduction was 801, while the latest figure was a mere 43. In recent years there have been about the same number of fund launches in both halves of the year, but in the latest year there was an unsurprising tail-off (1,687 over the first half; 1,291 in the second) partly the result of some planned launches being shelved. Just as 2009 did not herald a new dawn of product rationalisation across the industry (there was a net increase of 871 funds in 2010), so it seems very unlikely that 2011 will either. Instead market conditions will largely dictate where product development priorities lie.

With new fund launches such a significant part of asset management companies’ activity, it is worth providing further insights here. Looking back over the past ten years it is possible to see the proportion of growth in the industry that relates to these new launches. Over the first five years (2002-2006), the 79 percent growth in industry assets was attributable to both new launches (60 percent) and existing funds (40 percent).

How much do UK investors care about costs?

One way of measuring this is to look at the assets invested in index tracking funds (where minimising costs is a core part of the product) and compare this to funds of funds (where the importance of professional fund manager selection entails an additional cost).

With 30.5 billion pounds invested in the former and 56.6 billion pounds in the latter as of November 30 2011, it would seem that retail investors in the UK are almost twice as likely to pay more for active management and fund selection than to minimise costs and seek to mimic the returns of an index. A similar picture is revealed for sales activity in 2011.

Having been researching this subject since 1999, I continue to believe that transparency and awareness of the ‘drag’ of charges on returns are crucial for long-term investors. Of course cost awareness cannot guarantee investors’ happiness and neither will greater transparency inevitably lead to greater competition. But both are powerful selling points for the mutual funds industry.

Other comments on the current debate:

· Fiduciary responsibility. This concept is acknowledged in the UK – to act in the best interests of investors – but it has not been extended to the oversight of fees. This surely needs further consideration.

LIPPER: Equine vs equity investing

Is betting on horses very different from picking stocks? Can understanding a gambler’s approach and mentality give a better understanding of fund managers?

In searching for answers to these questions, I spoke to Paul Moulton, a professional gambler who originally worked in the fund management industry. He then set up a fund research company (Fitzrovia International, which he eventually sold to Reuters), although his working life began with an attempt to become a professional chess player.

Most of the fraternity of professional gamblers who make a living from horse racing are what Moulton describes as ‘traders’ or ‘chisellers’.

This group do not really look at horses at all, but look at market movements, hedging back their bets, and aiming to make tiny but regular profits with much less risk. They remain tucked away in their homes in front of an array of computer screens.

Moulton sees himself as part of a second, smaller group of professional punters, those he refers to as ‘judges’, some of whom look at horses in the paddock to assess their physical condition and thus their chances, while others are more reliant on assessing form based on previous races.

Some of them may even be conscious of the FSA’s warnings on funds’ past performance, which is deemed to be no guide to future returns. Although past performance does tend to shorten a horse’s starting price.

As part of this approach, Moulton has gathered vast amounts of data on all aspects of racing (jockeys, trainers, pedigrees, speed figures and so on) in a database that covers all horses in all races in the UK and Ireland since January 2005.

LIPPER: Are ETFs in trouble?

By Detlef Glow,  Head of EMEA Research at Thomson Reuters fund research firm Lipper. The views expressed are his own.

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) have found themselves under ever more scrutiny from regulators and market participants this year and expectations are that new rules for the sector are just a matter of time.

It’s tempting to think of ETFs as unwilling victims of new regulation, but to my mind, ETFs have much to gain.

The point is that it isn’t just regulators who are seeking improved transparency on fund holdings and on the use of derivatives by mutual funds, crucially it is end-investors too. And once the fog has cleared, they might come to see ETFs — with daily published portfolios and clearer statements on the use of derivatives in general — as a role model for all kinds of mutual funds.

The discussion surrounding ETFs could leave you with the feeling that they are unregulated products; that fund promoters can go wild when creating new products and with the use of derivatives in the portfolios. In reality though, ETFs follow the same local and/or international legislation of any other mutual fund; the EU UCITS regime for example.

So, why all the fuss around ETFs? In my opinion, there is nothing uniquely wrong with these products as they are using the same tools and techniques used by other funds under the UCITS regime. Some authorities, however, have raised questions as ETFs grow in popularity among professional investors. A deeper look into the questions posed shows that the points made by the critics are not only applicable to ETFs, but to any mutual fund.

CONCERN

GLG: Italy and Greece deserve a central bank

Guest contributors Bart Turtelboom and Karim Abdel-Motaal run the Emerging Market strategy at Man GLG. The views expressed are their own.

History is written by the victors. That is what emerging markets discovered after their currency crises of the 1990s, and it is what will happen when the annals of the euro crisis are compiled. Treatment of this crisis has varied, but in all its forms the basic premise is already set: Germany and the world are the undeserving victims of Peripheral European excess.  The Periphery spent and borrowed too much causing the current crisis.  Add to this the cultural imagery of Greek pensioners retiring at the tender age of 55 on exotic Aegean islands at German savers’ expense and the colourful chapter on this historical saga is written.

If Emerging Markets is any guide, the problem with this narrative is not just that it is wrong, but downright dangerous in its policy implications.  The tyrannical hold of this perspective on European policy making is pushing the continent down the path of a historic pro-cyclical fiscal contraction almost as the be all and end all of crisis response.  There is already a mountain of evidence that this has not worked, whatever the merits of debt reduction and ideological divisions on its pace and timing.  The missing ingredient has always been and remains today, quite different.  Italy and Greece lack a central bank.  More importantly, they deserve one, desperately.

For an economy where paper money is the medium of exchange and fractional reserve banking exists where a bank transforms a unit of deposits into a multiple of that in loans, a central bank is essential.  This is as true of Switzerland as it is of Greece.  It performs a function of lender of last resort to prevent a rapid run on an otherwise solvent bank (a liquidity crisis) from turning into a solvency one for that bank or for the entire banking system.  When Italy and Greece signed onto the Euro, they had a legitimate right to expect that the Central Banks they were giving up would be replaced by a common Eurozone one, which would in effect perform the same function for their economies.  What they got instead was a Central Bank which is constrained by mandate, and German objection to its modification, from performing that function for anyone but Germany.

In the Eurozone, not only are the ECB’s clients the member state banks, but also the sovereigns.  We are in the advanced stages of a full blown and contagious run on both, with the ECB for all intents and purposes on the sidelines.  Whatever support it has provided so far in the guise of purchases of distressed member state debt and bank liquidity provision has been trivial in relation to the size of the run, and communicated in such a tentative way as to aggravate it, by signalling impotence.  The ECB’s absence, whatever its legal justifications, has effectively reduced Italy and Greece, not to mention the Eurozone, to the status of a barter economy.

Italians and Greeks can and should justifiably ask for redress.  They did not give up their Liras and Drachmas to be put through a fiscal vice as the cost of the most basic central banking services being provided them, any more than U.S. states did for the same service from the Federal Reserve.  The lender of last resort function is a relatively uncontroversial one, which has little to do with ideological debates about the desirability or effectiveness of active monetary policy or with Weimer Republic-induced phobias of hyperinflation and money printing.  The idea, that in the middle of a full-blown bank/sovereign run, a central bank’s intervention would be made conditional on preceding actions, fiscal or otherwise, that are subject to political vagaries, is extraordinary and dangerous.

A confidence crisis is precisely that; it cannot wait and must be dealt with decisively and conclusively if the vicious cycle is to be arrested.  This is not to say that the fiscal and debt problems which challenged confidence to begin with should not be addressed; they should.  However, in this European version of the Emerging Markets archetype, we are in now well beyond the phase where a medium term fiscal adjustment announced by technocratic governments in Greece or Italy will have any effect.  It maybe part of the solution, but it is certainly not sufficient, or the most urgent issue.  The ECB needs to act and act big.

GCC fund firms face structural flaws: Lipper

By Dunny P. Moonesawmy, Head of Fund Research for Lipper in Western Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The views expressed are his own.

Spare a thought for the fund managers trying to make their business work in the Middle East and north Africa (MENA) this year.

Those investing in home markets have faced the uncertainty and drama of the Arab Spring and the wear and tear on affected markets. The Egyptian Stock Exchange was closed for several months while in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, all markets ended the first half in the red (even if the Abu Dhabi index and the Saudi Tadawul All Shares resisted well, down 0.57 percent and 0.67 percent respectively.)

Moreover, the fund industry in the region faces some deep structural flaws.

Taking the GCC alone, there are 101 fund management companies in the region managing $28.5 billion of assets between them, according to Lipper data. Those firms run a total of 337 funds with average assets under management at $84 million; taking a median figure to iron out the inflating effect of a few bigger funds that figure is just short of $20 million. To see a graphic showing AuM by asset class in the GCC, click here.

The six biggest funds in the region had cumulated assets of $10 billion and represented over a third of the market at the end of September. To see a graphic of the top funds, click here.

Absolutely Fabulous?

Among the side-effects of the financial crisis, the importance for European wealth managers and other intermediaries of both managing investors’ expectations and understanding fully what those expectations are, has been underlined.

This is not entirely new. The rise of absolute return products largely reflects intermediaries’ efforts to deal directly with client expectations that, for many, have taken a severe blow. It is worth looking back at the level of inflows to funds seeking absolute returns before and after 2008 (the nadir for the industry in terms of sales activity) to see how this has evolved.

To view the chart, click here.

The data not only show the relative level of in- and out-flows for absolute return funds in Europe since 2005, but serves as a means to illustrate how activity has shifted in Europe.

Up to the middle of 2007, investors in Italy, Switzerland and France were strong supporters of absolute return. However the failure of many of these funds through 2007-2008 sent investors running for the door. The best example of this is enhanced money market funds, primarily bought in France, where 31.6 billion euros of sales in 2005-2006 were followed by redemptions of 39 billion in 2007-2008 and essentially no activity since.

As the fund sales trends suggest, many investors were less than impressed with their funds’ performance as the effects of the credit crisis rippled through the financial markets. By early 2008 the banking ombudsman in Lausanne had already received complaints about absolute return products.

The previous year had seen the arrival of the Eligible Assets Directive (EAD), providing legally-binding guidance on which financial instruments could be included in cross-border Ucits funds, following the expansion of their investment capabilities with the implementation of Ucits III in 2003.

Envy, desire and basis points

I would like to tell you a story. It’s one about the tempestuous relationship between fund managers and their investors, a tale of envy, desire and basis point negotiations. You may have spotted by now that this is not the plot for this season’s latest blockbuster.

My story has recently gained a little extra spice with two old-fashioned heroes riding into view. One from the West – Omaha - and the other from the East - well, his father hailed from Russia – with both willing to make a little less money in order to help their fellow citizens. Warren Buffett and Stuart Rose are not alone; others in France and Germany are also saddling up. These horsemen seem to be heading in the opposite direction from those in the European funds industry.

There is one aspect that I’d like to look at to explore this: the fees generated by funds in relation to their assets. And in this case Europe and the US look pretty different.

One of the implicit benefits of investing in a mutual fund is that investors enjoy lower annual charges as a result of a fund’s success in increasing assets, in other words that costs fall as more investors join – economies of scale.

The following chart illustrates these economies of scale in action for funds sold across Europe. But although the disproportionately high expenses borne by the smallest funds does mean that average total expense ratios (TERs) fall as assets rise, crucially, such economies of scale do not continue through further asset rises among larger funds.  View the chart by clicking here.

ECONOMIES OF SCALE

When comparing the UK to continental Europe there appears, at first, to be a different approach. But on closer scrutiny one can see that the apparent lack of economies of scale being passed on to investors largely reflect the fact that the smallest funds in the UK tend not to let expenses get out of control and create disproportionately high TERs.

Luke Ellis: 2011 volatility is no repeat of hedge funds’ tough 2008

Guest blogger Luke Ellis is head of the multi-manager business at Man Group, the world’s largest listed hedge fund manager.

The views expressed here are entirely the author’s own and do not constitute Reuters’ point of view.

The late summer’s toxic blend of sovereign debt solvency fears and slowing economic growth wrong-footed some of the biggest and best-known hedge funds. So it would seem natural to assume that August was a terrible month for hedge funds generally – just as it was for the equity markets.

Yet for every hedge fund that lost, say, 12%, another made money. Not bad in a month when the MSCI World Index (hedged USD) of leading stocks fell -7.0%.

Indeed August showed just how suited hedge funds are to today’s febrile financial markets. If, as seems likely, the West’s indebted economies have entered an era when they lurch between slow growth and recession, then hedge funds appear far more capable of generating returns for investors than straightforward equities or bonds.

Rude health, and a changing of the guard?

By Detlef Glow, Head of EMEA Research at Lipper. The views expressed are his own.

The European exchange-traded-fund (ETF) industry has shown some resilience in the face of questions about management practices raised by market observers like the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and regulatory bodies like the FSA in the UK.

The segment grew by 7.74 percent over the first seven month of 2011, with assets under management up by 17.20 billion euros to reach 239.37 billion.

This has come as some critics have characterised ETFs as a systemic risk for financial markets, due to the use of swaps to replicate the underlying index. Another risk that has been highlighted was the liquidity of some securities accepted as collateral to secure the positions in derivatives and for security lending strategies. Also raised was the outstanding short volume in some ETFs.

But as the ETF industry is fully regulated by market authorities and uses typical techniques for derivatives and securities-lending strategies, the risks highlighted are already known. In addition, the assets under management of the global ETF industry are still less than ten percent of the total, and the issues might be better raised with respect to all funds, instead of pointing the finger at one market segment.

Despite publicity surrounding these issues, and in contrast to the expectations of some market observers, the industry has shown a pretty normal growth pattern in terms of newly-launched funds, with 167 new products hitting the market during the first half of 2011. Most of those were equity funds (102), with commodity funds a significant minority (22).

To see details of the new ETF launches click here and here.