Warhorse WFH: asset management thought leaders' round up: News
As you will know from the back of my WFH media directory, I follow various organisations I rate when I wrote a cheat booklet called “our global themes in asset management” some years back at Aberdeen Asset Management.
Here it is again if it is useful. It is on the “Working From Home” section of the Warhorse Partners’ website. Other than the contact details of the investment industry’s publishers, the back end is my favoured collection of thought leaders, market intelligence and people who help me stay informed. Thank you again Ptarmigan Media, Capital City Media and assorted friends everywhere for helping.
https://warhorsepartners.com/working-from-home
News on Linkedin last Sunday revealed some frustrations as to news sources in the UK. Academic Roger Miles pointed to BuzzFeed breaking a story about the Government’s “three-stage strategy” for tackling coronavirus. I complimented Roger on this, as he identified it and he shared it. “The "best-case scenario" would see some nonessential retail shops and industries reopen in early to mid-May and further social distancing measures relaxed over the summer.” Here is the link
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/coronavirus-uk-lockdown-three-stage-exit-plan
Out this week, the Greenwich Quality Index for Client Service is derived from client evaluations of \[institutional\] asset managers’ service quality along such metrics as understanding of clients’ goals, reporting quality and ability to support clients with intellectual capital and insights. The interviews took place primarily during Q1 2020, allowing us to divide the feedback into pre- and post-COVID-19 datasets. Greenwich Associates, Pandemic Perspectives Part 4. Although institutionally focused, their findings are useful so often thematically across all channels.
The Association of Investment Companies has been publishing helpful COVD-19 updates for members on its website, as well as emailing managers and boards as it reveals itself. The guidance from FCA and other sources for the management of AGMs, either known as hybrid/remote or even remote is being discussed across the sector. We have been in discussions with Asset TV and RDIR, the investor relations specialists for solutions that could be specific to the needs of the investment trust sector. This is early days. info@warhorsepartners.com
I do like the way the AIC date stamps its https://www.theaic.co.uk/members/technical-notes/technical-notes-issue-2-%E2%80%93-17-april-2020/appendix-%E2%80%93-guidance-and-submissions-. And thank you Annabel for generously allowing me to tease your podcast. It is hard, the tech is great and it takes hard work to keep people informed.
https://www.theaic.co.uk/members/covid-19-centre
I found Citywire Digital so fast and polished to get off the ground. I watch my friend Lawrence Lever’s “CEO Tapes” with total fascination and he is broadcasting and interviewing as usual, just now with WFH CEOs sharing their views of the challenges they face. This is such an attractive format, the CEOs remain respectfully high level in their determination and discussion. There is some registration to do to access this, but I think it well worth it to access their mindset. I’ve had lovely chats to Citywire this week and might write a “weekly community diary” for them with what I am learning from the whirligig world we are in. I promise to stop saying to millennials “Kids, Dad stole your toys” as it is almost funny, but they were kind enough to let me have them to help manage our website. Thank you for that, I am amazed what this technology is now doing.
Capital City Media’s Mike Richards has been outstandingly helpful keeping me abreast of the media industry’s response to corona and also some vitally helpful links to webinars, blogs and other material from the media world. He highlight a the webinar series by Wall Street Journal.
https://www.partnerswsj.com/webinar-master-calendar/p/1
Another really useful source is pollster YouGov. Mike reminds me how helpful You Gov can be. Apologies for the slightly long link. YouGov has partnered with the IGHI at Imperial College London to gather global insights on people’s behaviours in response to COVID-19 across 29 countries.
Worth a separate section of its own is the YouGov findings of “Working from Home”. Why I love this is because we no longer really know what anyone else’s home is doing. So at industry webinars over the last week, if one gets the sense that WFH corporate workers are somewhat unhinged now from office life, this hints at the dissociation many are feeling. I think the “old hands” to be saluted must be freelancers, who actually have experience of operating in space and time away from their domestic and social lives. For conventional office-bound employees, the cultural shock must be enormous. I say waggishly, so finally a dividend for being sent away to boarding school at a preternaturally early age – confinement, isolation and “out of bounds” are too depressingly familiar. Ha.
The YouGov findings might seem obvious after reading them, but I think very useful.
Rupert Hodson who runs Dianomi, the omni-visible, all financial-media content marketing has graciously agreed to post my podcast of two friends recovering from coronavirus in North London. It is quite long, but Dr Hugo Slim of Oxford University and Asma Aswan talk about recovering from coronavirus and the economic impact expected ahead, in case we get too narrow, this covers the world. My profound thanks for sharing; Rupert expects this to reach 30,000 asset management professionals in the US and UK. I liked learning to podcast, but the content is all that matters. Mark Colegate of Asset TV reassured me yesterday, if worrying about sound and visual quality, “don’t worry about what it looks like, it is what it does that matters.”
https://www.marketviews.com/?verifiedifa=1
In a slight rush to close but I would like to name check some of our favourite industry thought leaders for their news flow, in no particular order:
Institutional Investor reported Deloitte Casey Quirk’s of fee compression in the asset management sector last month. Ouch. McKinsey & Company this month issued a new report on how the COVID-19 pandemic will impact wealth management in the Asia Pacific region, including what might happen if the virus continues to spread reported below (“ the MSCI World Index has dropped approximately 30% from peak value in less than a month”).
https://www.financialstandard.com.au/news/how-wealth-management-must-respond-to-covid-19-158170883
Finally, the FCA updates its coronavirus section, but takes a little weeding to uncover the investment section, as they cover such a broad waterfront.
https://www.fca.org.uk/firms/information-firms-coronavirus-covid-19-response