Investing in Investors Was a Bad Investment Idea
European asset managers underperformed the broader market this year. The outlook for 2022 is even worse.
Each in its own way.
Photographer: skynesher/E+As Leo Tolstoy taught us at the beginning of Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s a lesson being relearned by investors in European asset managers, whose shareholdings have woefully missed out on the gains enjoyed across the broader equity market this year.
The environment for the fund-management industry continues to be challenging, to say the least, with downward pressure on fees, investor preference for cheap index-tracking products and an expensive arms race to keep up with the latest technology. But the biggest laggards among Europe’s standalone money managers have underperformed for idiosyncratic reasons.