Author: Lily Harper

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.An activist hedge fund has called on Macy’s to hive off real estate properties including its Manhattan flagship store and take other measures to revive the flagging share price of the US department store chain. The broadside from Barington Capital Group and real estate investment partner Thor Equities is the latest activist involvement at Macy’s, a 194-year-old company. The two firms did not disclose the size of their stakes in Macy’s, which had a market value of $4.5bn as of Friday. Estimating that Macy’s…

Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the UK house prices myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.Only the richest 10 per cent of households in England could afford to buy a house with less than five years of household income in the year to March 2023, while property prices in London were unaffordable for any income group.Average annual disposable house income stood at £34,569 in England in the 12 months to March last year, while the average house price was £298,000, a ratio of 8.6, the Office for National Statistics said on Monday.The UK statistics agency defines…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Nuno Matos, the former HSBC and Santander executive, has been appointed as the new chief executive of Australian bank ANZ as it grapples with an investigation into alleged bond price rigging, and bad behaviour on its trading floor.ANZ said on Monday that Matos, who was considered a leading candidate for the chief executive role at HSBC, would replace long-serving leader Shayne Elliott next year.The move will mean Matos swapping one of the world’s biggest banks for Australia’s fourth-largest lender, which has retreated…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Asset management groups that made their names scouring public equity and debt markets for investment opportunities are now racing to pivot into opaque but lucrative private funds.The sector’s largest players are striking bold acquisitions, unveiling novel partnerships with private capital groups, or working with their advisers to plot new strategies for their future. Many boardrooms believe they are engaged in no less than a fight for survival in an increasingly competitive investment landscape.BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Capital Group in the US, as…

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.With actively managed equity funds showing outflows for most of the past two years, according to research company Morningstar, even the most orthodox strategies are a tough sell. The few funds still gaining traction with investors have tended to focus on sub-sections of the market, such as technology or sustainability.That has hit demand for “special situations” funds, a loosely-defined term that often refers to funds that see opportunities in one-off events such as restructurings or mergers and acquisitions, and whose investment philosophy emphasises…

Welcome to FT Asset Management, our weekly newsletter on the movers and shakers behind a multitrillion-dollar global industry. This article is an on-site version of the newsletter. Subscribers can sign up here to get it delivered every Monday. Explore all of our newsletters here.Does the format, content and tone work for you? Let me know: harriet.agnew@ft.com One damp squib to start: The UK’s biggest wealth manager St James’s Place is abandoning its ritzy annual staff gatherings at London’s O2 Arena in favour of an online company meeting in January, as it races to cut costs and repair its corporate image.And…

Active fund managers may find it hard to defend their mainly higher fees compared with their passive fund peers, but when it comes to sustainable investment they often claim the moral high ground.This is because they can choose to divest from, or sell shares in, any offending company, depriving it of capital and thereby, in theory, influencing management decisions. Passively managed strategies, in contrast, follow an index and, instead of selling, their only recourse is to talk to, or engage with, the company.The investment community has been split over which is the most effective approach but, globally, 1,600 institutions have…

Active fund managers have been in retreat in recent decades, assailed by the advancing forces of cheap, benchmark-tracking passive funds, except for one corner where they are gaining market share: the once passive stronghold of exchange traded funds.ETFs have been on a tear of late, with global assets tripling since the end of 2018 to $14.4tn, according to consultancy ETFGI, as opinions grow that they are simply better than more traditional mutual funds. Actively managed ETFs have outshone this rate, albeit from a low base, particularly in the US where they have risen 700 per cent since 2019 to $806bn…

Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House, with a vow to support the fossil fuel industry, could strengthen the hand of those leading a backlash against sustainable investment. But observers in the sector insist it is not “game over”, as funds continue to flow into renewable energy and green technology assets. It is easy to see how investors aligned with long-term environmental, social and governance ideals can find it hard to hold that faith in an increasingly polarised political debate. In the US, dozens of anti-ESG laws have been enacted in Republican states, according to law firm Ropes &…

Asset managers have had two accusations levelled at them when it comes to green investing. First, that they are not doing enough to use their influence as investors to tackle climate change. And, second, that they have, in some cases, overstated the green credentials of their funds to benefit from the growing interest in sustainable investing. In their defence, however, investment managers say they are working with “one hand tied behind their backs” — as one portfolio manager puts it — because of a lack of high-quality, comprehensive, and trustworthy data regarding any company’s environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance.In short,…