Asia’s Top Money Managers
Necessity being the mother of invention, fund managers have learned to improvise. After enduring more than a decade of awful stock markets in Japan and occasional market crashes in the rest of Asia, they have moved beyond traditional equity products to fine-tune their fixed-income management skills and developed the absolute-return mind-set of hedge fund managers. They have also had to keep a tight lid on costs.
“Horrifying bear markets do have some benefits,” says Jan Kingzett, a London-based director of Schroder Investment Management since 1987 who has run several of the firm’s Asian businesses. “A decade ago our Asian business was very equity oriented, now it is far more diversified. Savers still want to save, it’s just a question of finding the products that work.”
That’s easier said than done. Overall, total assets rose from $5.86 trillion at the end of 2001 to $6.3 trillion a year later, a 7.5 percent gain, according to Institutional Investor‘s 2003 Asia 100, our ranking of the region’s biggest money managers. Alas, the respectable gain turns into a loss when most Asian currencies’ appreciation against the U.S. dollar is excluded.
How the rankings were compiled Institutional Investor‘s ninth annual ranking of Asia’s largest institutional investors includes banks, insurance companies, pension funds, independent fund managers and firms domiciled in 11 Asian countries, as well as 20 international managers with significant investments in the region, though the assets are not necessarily managed there. Subsidiaries with substantial assets under management have generally been listed separately.
New York
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