Al Clark

Global investors’ increasing demand for multi-asset investment strategies is driving Nikko Asset Management, a related company to Tyndall Investment Management Limited, to form a specialist portfolio management team in Singapore, the company announced yesterday.

The team, which currently oversees $24 billion of assets for institutional and intermediary clients, will be launching multi-asset products as well as integrated solutions for clients around the world.

The Tokyo-based asset manager previously had multi-asset staff in separate locations, and through this move will strategically consolidate its resources in order to maximise the firm’s global multi-asset capabilities.

Nikko Asset Management aims to provide institutional-quality multi-asset products, solutions and customised advisory services to global clients, who are increasingly allocating their assets to investment opportunities around the world, while also protecting against downside risk.

“Multi-Asset is gaining a lot of attention from investors, and we are taking this action to serve growing demand across the globe,” said Yu-Ming Wang, Global Head of Investment at Nikko Asset Management. “Clients are demanding multi-asset funds as well as tailored solutions to manoeuvre through volatile markets to reach their investment targets. To meet these needs, we’ve brought together a highly specialised team in the same location to reach critical mass.

We recognise Singapore as our centre of excellence for Asia, and as a central hub we will be strengthening our investment capabilities further in this region, and elsewhere as the opportunities arise.”

Al Clark, who was appointed as Global Head of Multi-Asset in March, will lead the 18-member team. The team has an average of 20 years of experience in the financial industry. Clark himself has over 20 years of experience in trading and portfolio management, having spent the last seven years in Singapore as Head of Multi-Asset for Asia Pacific at Schroder Investment Management where he played a leading role in asset allocation decisions for the region and had management oversight of a team across Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tokyo and Sydney.

Global investors recently have increased their searches for multi-asset products, growing by 33% in 2013, according to a Mercer LLC survey in April[1] . Meanwhile, State Street Corporation said in a separate report in June[2] that there was a limited supply of managers who could provide multi-asset solutions.

———

[1] 2013 Global Manager Search Trends
[2] State Street 2014 Asset Manager Survey – “Frontline Revolution: The New Battleground for Asset Managers”

The post Nikko Asset Management unveils global multi-asset capability, integrates experience and assets in Asia appeared first on AdviserVoice.

The addition of a highly experienced global active equity capability is Nikko Asset Management’s latest move in fortifying its investment offering to clients, the company announced yesterday. The Tokyo-based firm has brought in a team of six portfolio managers, led by William Low, who previously managed the high-alpha equity team at Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (now owned by Aberdeen Asset Management).

“We are excited that we have been able to attract this highly successful investment team in an area where we believe we can add value to clients’ portfolios,” said Yu-Ming Wang, global head of investment at Nikko Asset Management. “The track record that Will Low and his five colleagues have assembled demonstrates that they are exceptionally qualified as active global equity managers, and we look forward to their contribution to our European business.”

In 2001, while at BlackRock, Low formed and led an EAFE* team that was known for its strong alpha track record. In 2011, Low joined Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, where he led the formation of a global equity team that included Stephen Corr, James Kinghorn, Greig Bryson, Iain Fulton and Johnny Russell. From its inception, the team provided an excellent alpha track record in global equities in addition to continuing to manage EAFE mandates.

“We are delighted that Nikko Asset Management will be the new home for our team. We clearly share a vision for making global equities a key source of growth for the overall firm,” Low commented. “We’ve been impressed with Nikko Asset Management’s commitment to providing world-class investment products to clients, and this arrangement allows us to do what we do best, which is concentrate on well-researched, high-conviction ideas to deliver alpha in global equity strategies for our clients.” The team, which manages benchmark-agnostic, long-only global equity portfolios, will continue to be based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and will work closely with Nikko Asset Management’s full-service European headquarters in London, covering sales and marketing, client service, operations, information technology, legal and trading functions.

Nikko Asset Management has been expanding its investment capabilities recently. In October 2013, it acquired a specialist Asian equity team from Sydney-based Treasury Asia Asset Management, and in March 2014 it brought in a multi-asset capability, which is based in Singapore.

The post Nikko Asset Management adds global equity capability to investment suite appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Nikko Asset Management is a related entity of Tyndall Investment Management Limited. Drews was most recently Global Head of Key Clients and Family Offices at Barclays Wealth and Investment Management in London. She will be relocating to Tokyo later in 2014 to assume her new role.

“We feel very fortunate to have Stefanie join Nikko Asset Management as we take our institutional business to the next level,” said Hideo Abe, Executive Vice Chairman of Nikko Asset Management. “She has had a distinguished career in the investment and wealth management industry and we are very confident that her contributions will greatly improve the customer experience for institutional clients.”

Drews will be responsible for developing and managing the institutional proposition working closely with the firm’s investment, operational and distribution teams globally. She will manage institutional product, marketing and cross border specialist groups in Nikko Asset Management’s locations around the world. Her role was created in line with the firm’s strategy of increasing its business in the institutional arena.

Prior to Barclays, Drews was a Managing Director in Morgan Stanley’s Private Wealth Management business, where she ran a highly successful investment management program for institutional clients as well as high-net-worth individuals. She is a graduate of the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oxford University.

The post Nikko Asset Management makes senior executive hire in institutional business appeared first on AdviserVoice.

NIKKO AM launches Singapore’s first Chinese onshore bond fund.

Singapore’s first Chinese onshore bond fund* is being launched by Nikko Asset Management Asia Limited (Nikko AMAsia) in partnership with the Bank of China and DBS Bank, following Nikko AM’s one-billion Renminbi quota award for the fund as a Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII), the company announced today. The fund is expected to launch in Singapore in mid-July.

Nikko AM Asia is a related entity of Tyndall Investment Management Limited.

“We are elated to be pioneering the Chinese Onshore Bond Fund,” said Eleanor Seet, President of Nikko AM Asia, a subsidiary of Nikko Asset Management Co., Ltd. (Nikko AM) in Singapore. “The fund is strategically significant as a long-term proposition supporting Singapore’s role as a key offshore RMB centre. We take pride in being a forerunner in RMB internationalisation by providing Singapore domiciled investors with direct access to China onshore bonds, which are not readily accessible to foreign investors.”

“This is the first in a suite of RQFII solutions we are planning to provide. We expect allocations into this market from both local and global investors to grow, especially with a long-term positive outlook on the currency,” Seet added.

The development builds on Nikko AM’s successful track record of managing Asian bonds and credit over the last 30 years. In particular, it was one of the first fund managers to launch an offshore RMB bond fund shortly after the liberalisation of the Chinese bond market in November 2010. With a sizable presence in the market, the firm has exceptional access to new Asian bonds allocations and inventories in the secondary market.

“We are pleased to partner with Nikko AM on the Fund. While there is generally strong interest in bonds in Singapore, there are limited RQFII allocations available to offshore investors. Such bond funds will provide investors with the opportunity to participate in China’s growth and add diversification to their portfolio,” said V Arivazhagan, Managing Director & Head, Regional Investment & Treasury Products, Consumer Banking Group, DBS Bank.

Wang Lei, Assistant General Manager, Bank of China Singapore Branch, opined, “Bank of China is honoured to be one of the first banks in Singapore to distribute the inaugural RQFII fund to be launched here, and to have played a crucial role in Nikko AM obtaining the RQFII quota and status approval. We are one of the largest custodian banks in China, and the winner of the Custody Specialist Award for RQFII Custodian in The Asset Triple A Asset Servicing Awards 2014. This milestone collaboration with Nikko AM in Singapore taps on our strong foothold in China and further reinforces our position as the leading provider of RMB wealth management products in Singapore.”

The Fund, subject to regulatory approval, is designed for retail investors in Singapore seeking a total return of capital growth and income over the medium to long term through exposure to RMB and listed and unlisted RMB denominated fixed income instruments.

Investors in Singapore can invest in RMB through the Bank of China and DBS Bank when the fund becomes available in mid-July.

The post Nikko AM to launch Singapore’s first Chinese onshore bond fund appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Nikko Asset Management is a related entity of Tyndall Investment Management Limited.

“Japan’s Stewardship Code” was established under the auspices of the Japanese Financial Services Agency in February 2014 as a guide for institutional investors to “promote sustainable growth of investee companies and enhance the medium- and long-term investment return for clients and beneficiaries.” Nikko AM takes a global approach to the Code, focusing on the core components of stewardship.

Nikko Asset Management’s primary mission is to fulfill its fiduciary duty to clients and beneficiaries, and this is its perspective in adopting Japan’s Stewardship Code. The company aims to increase medium- and long-term returns on investors’ assets by analysis of and appropriate engagement with investee companies and the exercising of voting rights.

The entirety of Nikko Asset Management’s Policy Regarding the Stewardship Code can be accessed from the firm’s website. Nikko Asset Management will reguarly review and announce its perspective on the firm’s stewardship adoption policies and principles.

The post Nikko Asset Management announces policy regarding Japan’s Stewardship Code appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Ukraine volatility forces Nikoo AM to re-evaluate equities position.

The volatile geopolitical situation in Eastern Ukraine and the prospect for prolonged negative news out of China continue to weigh on Nikko Asset Management’s stance on global equities, which the Tokyo-based asset manager cut to neutral from overweight last month. Nikko Asset Management is a related entity of Tyndall Investment Management Limited. In its latest research report, Evolving Markets, the firm’s analysts provide detailed analysis of these risk factors as well as an overview of the most (and least) attractive emerging markets.

The situation in Eastern Ukraine may be more perilous than many realize because vital production facilities for military equipment, including missile, aircraft and naval engines are located in the region and which Russia is not likely to permit coming under the control of a hostile government.

“While we did not previously believe that Russia would invade Eastern Ukraine, we did expect ethnic violence to occur there,” said John F. Vail, Chief Global Strategist and Chairman of the Global Investment Committee. “However, now we have to admit that some form of Russian presence, perhaps ‘peacekeepers’ requested by the separatists, is likely. Whether opponents of strong Russian control in Eastern Ukraine decide to fight these peacekeepers is a key question, but it clearly could become more unstable than the Crimean example.”

Meanwhile, in China, Nikko Asset Management continues to believe the country will be able to avoid a hard landing even though negative news is accelerating on several fronts. Property price declines are spreading—with secondary prices starting to fall in many second- and third-tier cities—while the government is pushing even harder to rein in the shadow banking system, which provides funding to many struggling sectors of the economy.

“Falling property prices put a damper on investor sentiment, and also lead to less activity in the crucial housing construction industry,” Vail said. “Rising defaults among the shadow banks will lead to a rise in banks’ non-performing loans, but in the long run the government is doing the right thing in instilling some discipline in lending activity.”

In the emerging markets, Nikko Asset Management’s top investment professionals covering equities, fixed income and forex have updated their views on the relative attractiveness of several countries, based on a ranking of average scores across six categories: 1) the direction of the one-year interest rate, 2) the direction of the forex rate, 3) equity earnings growth, 4) equity valuations (based upon several measures), 5) political risk and 6) vulnerability to credit or property market downturns.

The most attractive emerging markets are India, Korea and Mexico, while the most unattractive markets are Chile, Egypt, Russia, South Africa, Thailand and Turkey. In the middle, average-scoring countries include China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Peru, the Philippines and Vietnam. Brazil scores slightly below average.

Overall, Nikko Asset Management is cautious on emerging markets equities as a whole, even though certain countries offer excellent prospects; nevertheless, investors should be cautious about the political risks associated with this asset class.

The post Risk factors prompting Nikko Asset Management to cut equity exposure worsening appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Mr Potter joined Tyndall in 2002 and has 20 years’ industry experience (see biographies below). He has been co-managing Tyndall’s flagship Australian equity strategy with Mr Van Munster for the past seven years and in that time has delivered strong and consistent outperformance to clients. Mr Potter will maintain his portfolio management responsibilities in his role as head of the Australian equities team. Mr Van Munster has headed the Tyndall Australian equities business since 2000, and has worked with Mr Potter for 12 years.

Mike Davis, Tyndall AM’s managing director, said that this is a natural progression of the Australian equities business with succession planning being a strong focus for the team for many years. The Tyndall Australian equity dual portfolio management structure has been in place since 2007. This has been very successful for Tyndall, both in delivering strong performance outcomes for clients and retaining a stable, experienced and motivated team.

“Bob and Brad have made a major contribution to Tyndall’s success and are two of Australia’s foremost equities managers. We are naturally sad to see Bob leave the business and the industry, and understand this is his personal lifestyle choice.

“We have both an extremely capable and talented successor in Brad, and a very strong team that has worked together for an average of 12 years at Tyndall. We have a well-established investment process and philosophy that has proven itself over time and is endorsed by the entire team.”

Mr Van Munster’s co-management responsibilities for the Tyndall flagship Australian equity strategy will be taken over by portfolio manager Jason Kim, with effect from 1 May 2014. Mr Kim is one of the most experienced and talented portfolio managers in the team, responsible for managing the strong-performing Australian concentrated share strategy.

“Warwick Cumming will continue in his role as deputy head, providing high level support to Brad including team management and overall responsibility for research, allowing Brad to focus solely on generating strong performance for our clients,” Mr Davis said.

Yu-Ming Wang, Nikko AM CIO commented: “We are pleased to seamlessly transition our highly-rated and proven investment process for Australian equities from the skilled hands of Bob to Brad, Jason and Warwick. With an average of 18 years’ industry experience, the team under Bob’s leadership has been a top performer for us and we expect that to continue. We also wish Bob all the best in his retirement.”

The post Bob Van Munster to retire; Brad Potter becomes Tyndall AM’s head of Australian equities appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Al Clark has joined Nikko Asset Management’s Australian subsidiary, Tyndall Investment Management Limited, in the newly created role of GlobalHead of Multi-Asset. Based in Sydney, Clark will be responsible for driving the growth of the multi-asset business for Nikko AM globally.

Nikko AM is bolstering its investment infrastructure to provide more value to its growing base of institutional and retail clients. Clark has more than 21 years of experience in trading and portfolio management, and has worked for major asset management groups such as Macquarie Funds Management, BT Financial Group and Schroder Investment Management, in both Sydney and Singapore. He has been developing and implementing strategic asset allocation models for almost a decade.

“We are very pleased to have Al on board, with his broad multi-asset knowledge and his proven experience in growing assets in this exciting area,” said Yu-Ming Wang, Global Head of Investment and CIO International. “Nikko AM’s investment team will concentrate on delivering performance in their respective asset classes, and Al will ensure that this performance is captured and packaged into products and investment solutions that meet the needs of our global clients. His appointment will accelerate the speed at which we can bring competitive multi-asset, multi-region products to market.”

Clark will report to Yu-Ming Wang, based in Tokyo. His appointment is the latest in a series of hires to support Nikko AM’s plans to deliver world-class investment products to clients across the globe. The matrix management structure announced by Nikko AM earlier this year has already proven successful in cross-fertilising investment ideas and investment capabilities, and the company intends to launch new products that combine local market needs with sophisticated multi-asset strategies.

Clark joins the Nikko AM Group from Schroder Investment Management (Singapore) Ltd, where he was responsible for growing the multi-asset business in Asia-Pacific.

The post Nikko AM Appoints Global Head of Multi-Asset appeared first on AdviserVoice.

The firm has won the award in four of the past five years, with over 1,600 readers taking part in the survey. Nikko AM’s award comes from an industry recognition of their ETF offering from investors and wider market participants.

“There is renewed interest in the Japan story from investors around the world, and we are happy to provide them market access through our broad ETF line-up,” said Koei Imai, Head of ETF Center of Nikko AM. “We are steadily expanding our product offering to meet the needs of investors in Japan and elsewhere.”

The best managers in their respective asset class are chosen based on product innovation, performance, consistency, expert knowledge and transparency. Results are centered on a peer review system’ that sees investors, managers, advisers and distributors and other industry participants nominate winners for each category.

The post Nikko Asset Management Wins Asia Pacific Equity ETF Management Firm award for fourth year in the last five appeared first on AdviserVoice.

Japanese market survives volatility.

Japan’s equity market weathered an onslaught of selling in February by global macro hedge funds who were disappointed that the Bank of Japan (BOJ) didn’t accelerate its easing plan, according to a new research report from Nikko Asset Management (Nikko AM), a related entity of Tyndall Investment Management Limited (Tyndall AM). As Japanese equities weakened and the yen appreciated, global risk markets dipped, though most rebounded quite quickly following the February trough. Risk markets will likely continue to be volatile through to the end of the second quarter, however, as underlying fundamentals remain intact, Nikko AM’s view is to maintain its longstanding overweight on global equities, and Japanese equities in particular.

“In our view, Japan does not need a much weaker yen, nor does the BOJ have to add to its monetary easing plan to achieve decent economic growth or a positive equity market,” said John F. Vail, Chief Global Strategist at Nikko AM’s Tokyo head office. “In fact, as the yen stabilises and forex hedge losses dissipate, this should accelerate corporate profitability and push up Japanese stock prices. This would be a boon for U.S. dollar-denominated investors, who would benefit from the rising stock market without losing half the gains from yen weakness. Japan’s Price-Earnings Ratio is very attractive, especially given the positive surprises in the current earnings season.”

Japan’s 2013 fourth quarter GDP growth was 1.0%, far below the consensus of 2.8%. However, Nikko AM’s research suggests that Japan’s GDP is greatly understated due to continuously falling inventories, and we expect that the figure will be revised upward. Assuming inventories had not declined, GDP growth in the fourth quarter would have been 3.4%. Despite such numbers, Japan had the highest year-on-year growth rate out of the G3 in both the third and fourth quarters of 2013, culminating in a 1.6% year-on-year growth for calendar year 2013.

Personal consumption in Japan also grew strongly in the fourth quarter of 2013 and should continue in the first quarter 2014, as buyers front-run the 3% VAT hike due in April 2014. We expect personal consumption in the second quarter to plunge following the VAT hike by as much as 13% quarter-on-quarter (seasonally adjusted annual rate) and minus 1% year-on-year, but will likely be reversed in the third and fourth quarters of 2014. This would lead to year-on-year growth in personal consumption being flat by the end of 2014.

Thus, we continue to believe that Japan’s recovery is intact, and our forecast is for 5.3% GDP growth quarter-on-quarter (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2014 and 2.0% GDP growth for calendar year 2014.

The post Japan story intact, despite market volatility appeared first on AdviserVoice.