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Workshop Details

Aberdeen Standard | Broadening client portfolios to capture diverse sources of return

While global equity and bonds return averaged 8% over the last 30 years, our modelling suggests that over the next decade 4-5% per year is a realistic expectation. Given this challenging and unprecedented environment, the key to delivering returns within client portfolios will be to broaden investment flexibility.

Aberdeen Standard Investments believe that investors will need to consider different, non-traditional ways of generating absolute returns while still making sure they enhance overall portfolio diversification. Multi-Asset strategies can play an important part of client portfolio construction as they contain a broad universe of investment ideas. We will discuss this across emerging market debt and other high-yielding investments, listed exposures to sectors such as real estate and infrastructure and other non-traditional asset classes. Strategies like these will become increasingly important as equity returns fall back to historical norms, and fixed-income assets will be challenged to deliver meaningful returns in our forecast scenarios.

Workshop Host:
Julien Lepine, Senior Investment Specialist – Multi Asset Solutions, Aberdeen Standard

Amundi | Thematic Investing: Investing in tomorrow’s world today

Disruption is what makes yesterday’s unimaginable today’s reality. It is the main factor driving the ever-increasing number of game-changing companies that are profoundly reshaping the way we live, communicate, and work. Although disruptive innovation has presented throughout history, it has just begun to accelerate under the combined impact of technological breakthroughs, globalisation, demographic changes, and environmental challenges. In this workshop, Vafa will delve into Global Disruptive Opportunities — a thematic strategy that invests in game-changing companies that have the potential to generate long-term growth. Hear more on how the strategy offers an alternative to cyclical hazards and about how thematic strategies are increasingly gaining ground as a core holding within portfolios by extracting additional alpha.

Workshop Host:
Vafa Ahmadi, Head of Global Thematic Equities, CPR AM (a fully-owned subsidiary of Amundi Asset Management)

AXA Investment Managers | Short Duration Delivers as a High Conviction Active Credit Strategy

As a short duration strategy seeks to constrain a portfolio’s average duration it essentially allows a reallocation of risk budget from active duration to active credit. During a period of rising interest rates or high interest rate volatility, an active short duration portfolio may generate stable and competitive total returns. With volatile term premium replaced by higher yielding credits an effective and efficient trade-off is accomplished. While long duration bonds reprice sharply based on difficult to forecast macro and technical factors, short duration credit tends to maintain price stability. Since a bond will repay at par as long as there is no default, it takes a significant idiosyncratic event to move the price of a high yielding short duration bond. Short duration credit bonds provide skilled active credit teams better visibility into their funding requirements, access to liquidity, competitive risk, regulatory hurdles and earnings capacity, which greatly mitigates default risk and allows for higher conviction positioning. This is one of the main reasons short duration credit funds have such favorable up capture to down capture ratios making them an essential consideration when choosing a total return bond strategy.

Workshop Host:
Jim Veneau, Head of Fixed Income, Asia, AXA Investment Managers

BlackRock | Navigating the private credit boom: Uncover the next big opportunity

Private credit has claimed a larger space in HNWIs’ portfolios in recent years as investors looking for reliable and higher income streams, portfolio diversification, and opportunities from market dislocation increase their exposure to the asset class. As late-stage economic cycle dynamics begin to manifest, what risks and opportunities exist today in private credit? In this workshop, we will provide an overview of the spectrum of private credit opportunities and highlight which areas of private credit we favour in today’s market environment, with a particular focus on US direct lending and Asian private credit.

Workshop Hosts:
Alex Vaulkhard, Director and Product Strategist for Global Credit Platform, BlackRock
Vincent So, Managing Director, BlackRock Alternatives Specialists

BNY Mellon | Seeking stable income in uncertain times

A shrinking high yield universe offset by renewed volatility, unsustainable business models, and disruptive markets challenge today’s investors. Political dynamics in the US and Europe are also expected to be significant over the next two years — so how will this affect high yield? In today’s session, Insight’s short-dated high yield manager, Uli Gerhard, will discuss the importance of stock-picking against a backdrop of wider issuer performance dispersion and uncertain market forces, and how this approach can potentially generate stable levels of income for investors.

Workshop Host:
Uli Gerhard, Senior Portfolio Manager – High Yield, BNY Mellon

Capital Group | ESG: A natural ally of long-term investing

ESG provides an important framework for assessing the long-term sustainability of investments and underpins effective engagement with portfolio companies. However, incorporating ESG factors into portfolio analysis is complex and nuanced. For clients, it can be confusing as there are no global disclosure standards or definitions and ESG ratings are unable to fully capture nuances in a single score. ESG rating providers, for example, employ different methods, which can lead to conflicting views even within the same company. There are no short cuts in ESG — rigorous fundamental analysis along with active stewardship are the two key pillars of ESG integration.

In this workshop, Natasha Braginsky Mounier, ESG Investment Director at Capital Group, will discuss the changing landscape of ESG investing and why ESG integration is a natural ally for long-term investors.

Workshop Host:
Natasha Braginsky Mounier, ESG Investment Director, Capital Group

Fidelity International | Fidelity’s multi-asset franchise: Relevant solutions for today’s markets

Fidelity has provided multi-asset solutions since the 1980s, during which time we have enhanced our platform and investment process to offer clients access to a wide range of diversified income streams and asset classes across various geographies (from traditional equities to REITs, to Asia Pacific as well as Greater China assets) and in niche areas (like alternative infrastructure investments to developing markets such as EM debt or China HY). Our evergreen multi-asset offering is overlaid by a proven decision-making framework. This differentiated approach includes allocation to uncorrelated assets, and the fine-tuning of portfolio exposures via the selective employment of derivative overlays at various critical points over a cycle. This unique and proven approach has allowed us to assist our investors in reaching their investment goals. We now manage close to US$40.9 billion in multi-asset solutions globally (as of February 2019).

Workshop Host:
George Efstathapoulos, Portfolio Manager, Fidelity International

Hermes Investment Management | Achieving impact through engagement in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals

Hermes Investment Management is a leading proponent of investments in which ESG considerations are fully integrated. It has taken this a step further by launching a strategy that engages with investee companies to make enhancements to their businesses that also help make progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. This workshop will cover the practical aspects of developing and running successful engagement programmes and integrating these into the investment process.

Workshop Host:
Hamish Galpin, Director, Head of Small & Mid Cap, Lead Manager of Global Small Cap, Hermes Investment Management

HSBC Global Asset Management | Asia fixed income – where do we stand now after the scintillating start to 2019?

At the end of 2018, the spreads and yields in Asian fixed income markets were offering an unusually good opportunity to capitalise on prices which were clearly out of line with fundamentals. But where do we stand now that these markets have made such a strong start to 2019? Is there value still left or is it now time to reduce allocations? Join to talk through these issues as to try to shine light on a more difficult part of the investment cycle.

Workshop Host:
Geoffrey Lunt, Director, Senior Product Specialist for Asian Fixed Income, HSBC Global Asset Management

Matthews Asia | Tapping Asia’s and China’s small-cap potential

Innovation, urbanisation, and the rising purchasing power of middle class consumers — these are just some of the driving forces behind the growth of small companies in the region today. Many small companies in Asia tend to focus on domestic markets, potentially insulating them from global macro concerns such as trade conflicts. Within Asia and particularly in China, the universe of small companies is rapidly expanding, generating many attractive investment opportunities. In this workshop, portfolio manager Lydia So explains how investors can benefit from allocating to Asia and China small-cap equities, and how this asset class can be positioned within a client’s overall investment portfolio.

Workshop Host:
Lydia So, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Matthews Asia

Pictet Asset Management | Integrating ESG factors in emerging sovereign debt investing

Pictet Asset Management believes emerging economies could benefit from improving ESG factors in the long term and that asset managers need to determine when ESG factors will be meaningful drivers of asset prices in the short term. As an industry, we are developing sovereign stewardship collaborations and have encouraged sovereign issuers to enhance ESG performance by engaging with policymakers and educating them on ESG issues as we endeavour to find the social value in managing assets.

Workshop Host:
Mary-Therese Barton, Head of Emerging Debt, Emerging Market Debt team, Pictet Asset Management