Global fund managers are increasingly looking at adopting the manager-of-manager style investment model which the Dutch call fiduciary management. Both Aviva Investors – the newly rebranded fund management business of Aviva – and UBS Global Asset Management are looking to go down the route of establishing themselves as the ‘one-stop-shop’ solution for pension fund clients, offering everything from investment advice and manager selection to the actual management of assets. Aviva Investors CEO Alain Dromer believes that the fund management industry will increasingly be demarcated by those that are global fiduciary managers and specialist niche boutiques that provide the alpha that clients are after. His is a view that is shared by some of the big names in the industry – Lindsay Tomlinson, vice-chairman of Barclays Global Investors in Europe agrees that the rapidly changing demands of clients will take many towards setting up fiduciary management structures. But what of the consultants who have traditionally dominated the arena of investment advice, at least in the UK? Fund managers are nonchalant. After all, consultants are now invading their territory by offering integrated consulting – again a manager-of-manager style investment structure. Dromer notes that it is dog-eat-dog world where ‘everybody is in competition with each other’, while Matthew Stemp, head of UBS AM in the UK, averred that investment consultants do not have the monopoly on ‘the right ideas’.

http://www.thomsonimnews.com/story.asp?sectioncode=7&storycode=37087

http://www.thomsonimnews.com/story.asp?sectioncode=7&storycode=36966