Industry news and views from Panacea and our partners.
Aberdeen Investments
Aberdeen Asset Management: Recreating a tiger: making Indian infrastructure work
India is renowned for its assortment of wild and wonderful wildlife. The national animal is the majestic Royal Bengal Tiger but the country is also known for its eponymous elephant. The two animals are apt metaphors for the state of the country’s economy and politics over the last thirty years.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Do not feed the bears
Asian markets are getting mauled. In recent years the emerging markets have looked vulnerable at times, but not to this extent. So what’s going on?
Aberdeen Asset Management: Dazed and Confused
Investors may be confused, and with good reason. On the one hand, reform-minded leaders are at the helm of many of Asia’s biggest economies
Aberdeen Asset Management: Retail revolution
Did you know that Chinese online shoppers spent some US$5.7 billion on a single day in November last year; that more and more well-heeled Indian consumers prefer to buy their tea from a pharmacy; or that urban Thais visit a hypermarket at least once a week and spend around half their monthly bills on groceries?
Aberdeen Asset Management: Rise of the machines
A quiet revolution is taking place in China. Few people will have heard of Shenzhen Everwin Precision Technology but this company is making history.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Pride Overconfidence comes before a fall
This article expands upon the seventh of Mike Turner’s Seven Deadly Sins, which was first published in booklet form in January 2014.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Greek bailout: déjà vu all over again
Greece and its creditors have finally reached a deal. So the immediate threat of Grexit has been averted and talks are due to begin shortly on the country’s third bailout. Is this grounds for relief and celebration?
Aberdeen Asset Management: Central banking auto-pilot – a rule-based recipe for disaster
Would you be happy if the cabin crew announced that the plane you were about to take off in had no pilot, and was going to be flown solely on auto-pilot? My guess is no.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Indian central banking independence – put into perspective
A recent proposal by the Indian Government has caused quite a stir in central banking circles because at the heart of the credibility of central banking lies a decision making process that is independent of government intervention – or at least one that is seen to be. But headlines can be deceiving. Scratch under the surface, and you’ll actually find that India’s proposal is actually a non- story.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Remembrance of Things Past and The Way We Live Now
Thousands of waves wash around us without cease, Often delighted, sometimes pleased, we’re whirled From joy to grief, and so from hour to hour Our restless feelings waver, change and sway.
Aberdeen: Nowhere to run...
June proved to be a challenging month for bonds, with government bond yields both in core and peripheral markets moving higher, and credit spreads moving wider.
Aberdeen Asset Management: UK lift off?
The UK economy has picked up speed heading into the summer months, just as the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) is about to hold a crucial meeting on interest rates.
Aberdeen: Pension Reforms: A long-term saving solution
In this video, Scott Dakers, Senior Investment Specialist within Aberdeen's Investment Solutions team discusses: • Aberdeen's risk targeted and outcome orientated products • Annuities and what the pension changes mean for your clients • Investment behaviour – both in retirement and saving for retirement. • With a flexible range of funds suited to different needs, appetite for risk and stages in life, one of our four funds will help you prepare for your retirement
Aberdeen: Envy - Imitating the index is the poorest form of flattery
When shopping for a product you expect it to do what it says on the tin. The idea of ‘what you see is what you get’ is a central tenet of the unwritten contract between a firm and its customers. If you bought a pair of award-winning headphones and arrived home to find they did not play any bass you would undoubtedly be frustrated, and feel that you had been mis-sold. Unbeknown to many, something very similar is happening in parts of the active fund management world.
Aberdeen: Greed - If everyone else is investing, probably best you don’t
What’s the most you would pay for a pretty tulip? A few dollars perhaps? How about a particularly beautiful midnight blue tulip with crimson petals? Nowadays, it seems hard to believe that at the height of ‘tulip mania’ – the first recorded financial market bubble in 1630s Holland – such tulip bulbs were selling for the equivalent of a wealthy merchant’s annual salary. before the crash in 1637, the price of the most desirable tulip had risen to the equivalent of an opulent house in Amsterdam.
Aberdeen: #1 Lust: The Seven deadly sins of multi asset investing
Lust - Resist the siren call of short-term opportunity,
Aberdeen Asset Management: China’s bubble trouble: A case of missing fundamentals
The market rout in China is gaining momentum as efforts to stop it are failing. Why? Despite extraordinary measures – bans on selling shares, extra liquidity being directed to brokers, cessation of initial public offerings (IPOs) – when a market has no fundamental basis for going up, at some point it has to go down. This is that moment.
Aberdeen: Greece update
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ referendum call on Friday took the country’s creditors by surprise.
Aberdeen Asset Management: A retail review
Aberdeen Asset Management recently attended the fourth Completely Retail & Leisure Marketplace event held at Old Billingsgate Market, London. Completely Retail is a unique, leasing-focused event for occupiers, landlords and agents.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Is it different this time?
Someone recently said to me that the four most expensive words in investment are "this time it's different". This phrase resonated with me because we hear it a lot in property and that has always concerned me. Some investors are using this rationale to explain why current pricing in the UK property market is now sustainable when it hasn’t been before, think 2007! Unprecedented interest rates, minimal inflation and quantitative easing are normally quoted.
Aberdeen Asset Management: UK fiscal policy: Bad debts
Public debt burdens are now higher in many of the advanced economies than they have been for forty years. This may not be much of a surprise, following a financial crisis in which government revenues fell and welfare spending and bank bailouts took priority over fiscal probity, but is it a problem?
When things overheat, there are two choices: cool them down or let them explode.
London’s housing market could be reaching such a point and its office market is not immune, either. As London house prices – and rents – rise beyond any given measure of affordability, wages must do the same in order to keep up.
Aberdeen Asset Management: It’s all in the yield
Recent research from Blackrock* showed that there's currently £5.3 trillion of government debt in circulation, which has a negative yield. As such, it seems surprising that investors would drive down bond yields to the extent that it costs them to lend the government money. But the current pricing environment for bonds shows why real assets, like property, with strong income streams are in such high demand.
Is it different this time?
Someone recently said to me that the four most expensive words in investment are "this time it's different". This phrase resonated with me because we hear it a lot in property and that has always concerned me. Some investors are using this rationale to explain why current pricing in the UK property market is now sustainable when it hasn’t been before, think 2007! Unprecedented interest rates, minimal inflation and quantitative easing are normally quoted.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Emerging Markets: Some are more vulnerable than others
Which emerging markets (EMs) are most at risk from a strong US dollar? The simple answer is those that are highly indebted, commodity dependent and have inflation problems. Russia, Brazil, Malaysia and Turkey are among the most vulnerable on these measures, though comparisons with the 1990s’ EM crisis appear overdone. In contrast, China, India and Mexico are all better placed to weather any further dollar strengthening.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Extreme Hoarders
Historically, hoarding has been an activity with a diverse following: those with a penchant for stuffing their abodes to the rafters with old newspapers and cats; olden-day pirates with their hidden piles of gleaming doubloons; and those with a sense of foreboding, who stockpile tinned food, bottled water and candles as insurance against some future catastrophe.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Emerging market bonds face unshocking shock
Edwin Gutierrez, Head of Emerging Market Sovereign Debt, on the expected US interest rate rise and emerging market debt.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Greece may appear to be in Dire Straits, but Europeans can still be ‘Brothers in Arms’
Although it is doubtful that Dire Straits were thinking about economics when writing “Brothers in arms”, Thomas Laskey, Pan-European Fixed Income Investment Manager, draws some interesting parallels between the track titles and Greece’s current predicament.
Aberdeen Asset Management: The Eurozone: Where do we go from here?
Here is a sight you seldom see: the Eurozone economy outgrowing both the US and UK. The first estimate of GDP* growth for 2015 Q1 showed the region expanding by 0.4%, compared with 0.1% in the US and 0.3% in the UK.
Aberdeen Asset Management: Bye-bye, Miss American Pie – Hello, Les Femmes d’Alger
The world’s larger auction houses have seen a lot of action over the last few weeks. This is a market that we don’t normally comment on, although much of what is going on is arguably symptomatic of something that we do regularly comment on: quantitative easing (QE).