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Concentration concerns

Concentration risk could well become the next big thing in fund governance, particularly for investors. 15 asset managers now hold 56.7% of all externally managed assets. And just a few recently merged and now debt laden entities, products of the PE boom, service their funds. That is also a worry as the PE bubble has burst.

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ESG risk oversight

2023 could be a critical year for ESG risk oversight. There seems to have been a much greater focus on this topic in the last few months; a number
of papers have been published on it recently, for example. Much of this work has been on emissions, particularly on how companies in funds’ portfolios are or should be measured.

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Ready for the next crisis?

This time last year Russian tanks were about to roll into Ukraine. Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, has called the Ukrainian war a ‘zeitenwende’, meaning a turning from one epoch to another. For the first time since the international fund industry got going, in the late 1980s, a geopolitical event has had a major and probably enduring impact on markets.

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Fund director evolution

Conversations that The NED has had with fund directors in Cayman and Ireland recently would suggest that the going is getting a little bit tougher in the governance business at the moment. Challenging markets, and what this has meant for the bottom line, may have something to do with this. The growing workload, brought on by ever-increasing regulatory requirements, probably hasn’t helped either.

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The governance of digital assets

Results of the first ever research study conducted with investors, managers and directors on the governance of digital assets

The NED had begun the fieldwork for this research study just before the collapse of FTX. When that event hit the headlines it was decided to pause the fieldwork, in order to see how systemic the FTX debacle was for the industry.

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