Institutional Asset Manager Newsletter

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NEWSLETTER | 13 Nov 2020

Race to become the world’s green finance capital gathers pace

Asset managers looking for sustainable ways to invest have had a lively week. It started when the EU’s latest social bond to fund its coronavirus-related unemployment scheme racked up orders worth more than 10 times the size of the issue, with demand exceeding EUR100 billion.

The US is expected to be joining the fray too, as President elect Joe Biden seeks to enact a USD2 trillion sustainable infrastructure plan.

To rival this, the UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak outlined his vision of restoring the UK to the position of "world's pre-eminent financial centre" after Brexit, as well as fulfilling the country’s legally-binding commitment to net zero by 2050.

A raft of green finance initiatives were also announced by Sunak, including a plan to offer the country’s first ever sovereign green bond, a move that investors including BlackRock, AXA Investment Managers, and Columbia Threadneedle have been calling for since last year. The inaugural ‘green gilt’ issuance is expected to be heavily oversubscribed.

This may go some way to closing the investment gap for achieving the UK’s net zero target, which the Green Alliance has estimated at GBP11.4 billion for this year alone.

Sunak also revealed that large companies will soon face stricter climate disclosure requirements, which will help asset managers assess an investment’s true ESG credentials.

An air of ESG transparency is also blowing in some investment firms. In an Institutional Asset Manager exclusive, Neuberger Berman (NB) unveiled plans to publicly announce which way it will vote on over 100 shareholder proposals, ahead of the voting. NB’s Jonathan Bailey says the company is hitting back at the common practice of ‘robo-voting’, and proving the worth of active management against passive products.

As asset managers struggle against sharper fee compression, with new research revealing that a growing proportion of managers offer half-price fees for new fund launches, sustainability could be the new edge.

maddy taylor signature.png

Madeleine Taylor
Editor, Institutional Asset Manager
maddy.taylor@globalfundmedia.com

Fri | 13 Nov 2020, 11:17

The first electronic SOFR versus Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR) basis swap compression trade has been executed on the Bloomberg SEF (BSEF).

Fri | 13 Nov 2020, 11:17

Schroders has launched a Multi-Private Credit Fund (MPCF) in response to the growing demands from UK Defined Benefit (DB) pension schemes to allocate to the long-term and alternative income streams that private credit asset classes can offer.

Fri | 13 Nov 2020, 11:17

MUFG Investor Services (MUFG), the global asset servicing arm of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, has created cNAV, a proprietary contingent net asset value solution for mutual funds.

Fri | 13 Nov 2020, 11:17

The majority of the largest asset managers worldwide faced a second consecutive year of declining interest in their corporate brands, according to Peregrine Communications’ second annual Global 100 report into the integrated marketing communications (IMC) performance of the asset management industry.

Eventus Systems to provide trade surveillance, AML transaction monitoring for BitMEX

Fri | 13 Nov 2020, 11:17

100x Group, the holding structure for BitMEX, has selected multi-asset class trade surveillance and market risk solutions specialist Eventus Systems to support its trade surveillance and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) transaction monitoring.

Fri | 13 Nov 2020, 11:17

Buy-side derivatives market participants are now able to fully outsource their entire non-cleared margin workflow, via the market's first end-to-end collateral solution developed by BNY Mellon.

Fri | 13 Nov 2020, 11:17

Allianz Global Investors (AllianzGI) has launched three new equity strategies that allow clients to invest in positive change in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).