XxX | Feature Contents Editorial
ACTIVE MANAGEMENT: TIME TO SHINE
It is tough being an active manager. Having to beat the market is not easy, a task that has been made harder since the financial crisis.
Asset prices have been largely driven by central banks replacing the liquidity that dried up in 2008 and not necessarily the fundamentals. Most investors have found better v alue in mirroring indexes. But a year ago it looked like this could change. Volatility returned in a major way as the Covid pandemic spread across the world. Indeed, the FTSE100 lost almost 15% of its value by the end of 2020.
Our cover story this month looks at what happened next. Did institutional investors turn to alpha generators for protection? Active managers have been promoting their services hard for 12 years, so when the long-awaited chance came for them to prove their worth, did they take it? You can find out from page 16. Such volatility is partly fuelled by a subdued global outlook, but one economy that has a more upbeat future is China. It was the first to report cases of Covid and appears to be the first major economy to get it under control. This is reflected in the performance of its stock exchanges, but are investors buying at a peak into a notoriously volatile mar- ket or is the world’s second largest economy set for a prolonged period of prosperity? Read our analysis from page 42.
The pandemic has also illustrated the importance of high ESG standards, from dealing with a large-scale health crisis, to social injustices and cleaner canals in Venice. In response, governments, corporates and fund managers have been lining up to announce carbon-neutral policies, but how are they going to achieve them? From page 26 we look at the role asset owners could play in turning these decarbonisation ambi- tions into reality. Playing a huge role here are local government pension scheme pools, such as Brunel Pension Partnership. We speak to Helen Price, the pool’s head of stewardship, engage- ment and voting, to discuss her push for action not words on climate pledges and why engagement is not just about equities (page 12). We hope you enjoy what is our 100th issue.
Stay safe.
Mark Dunne Editor
m.dunne@portfolio-institutional.co.uk
Issue 100 | February 2021 | portfolio institutional | 3
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