Vanguard S&P 500 ETF Tops $1tr in Asssts

The VOO (Vanguard S&P 500 ETF) has reached $1tr ahead of rival ETFs from State Street and iShares.

Man Group Misses Analyst Estimates

FTSE-250 global alternative investment manager, Man Group,  has had a share-fall of 7% following reports that a client pulled $6.1bn from one strategy in the first quarter.

AuM has been flat at $228.7bn missing analyst consensus expectations of $233bn.  

Good performance in several funds have helped to stem outflows (which are at their highest since 2024 - which experienced two quarters of net outflows).

A net $1.6bn of funds have been redeemed in Q1 2026.

Schroders agrees to Takeover by TIAA's asset manager Nuveen for £9.9bn

Nuveen LLC, an American asset manager (led by CEO William Huffman, a former CEO of Northern Trust Global Investments for 17 years), which manages assets on behalf of TIAA, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (led by Thasunda Brown Duckett), which has a century long focus on retirement security, has agreed to buy Schroders (led by Group Chief Executive Richard Oldfield) for almost ten billion GBP (1GBP=1.37USD, around the same level it was five years ago).

SJP announces lower cost funds after fee restructure

SJP (Saint James' Place), one of the UK's largest wealth managers, managing over £198.5 billion in client assets, has expanded its investment range with new multi-index range funds priced at 20bps. Funds developed by State Street will form the building blocks of these new funds. SJP stated the new funds will "help change the perception" that its products are too expensive.

Peter Hargreaves Steps Down from Hargreaves Lansdown

Peter Hargreaves, billionaire and co-founder of the semi-eponymous firm, is stepping down from the Board.

Hargreaves Lansdown Privatised with CVC Backing

Hargreaves Lansdown has begun life as a private company this year, 2025.  

The UK's largest direct-to-consumer investment platform agreed to be sold to a private equity consortium in August last year (following an initial approach in April) comprised of CVC Advisers, Nordic Capital and Platinum Ivy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

The offer of 1,140 pence per share was a premium of 54% of the share price prior to the April approach and valued the firm at £5.44 billion pounds.

Richard Flint (ex Head of Sky Betting and Gaming, which he led through a period of growth), fulfils the role of Interim CEO, with Darren Worth as Interim CFO. The management are investing in a technology-led transformation to improve HL's propositioning.

Hargreaves Lansdown PLC was delisted from the London Stock Exchange on the 25 March 2025 and initially owned by Harp Bidco Limited, which was renamed in September 2025 to Hargreaves Lansdown Group Limited.

First Brands Collapse Rattles Debt Investors

The auto parts supplier First Brands, known through its brands like STP oil (whose name stands for Scientifically Treated Petroleum), Prestone antifreeze and Simoniz car waxes, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, disclosing liabilities on 29 Sept 2025 exceeding $10 billion.  

This has come in the wake of creditors concern on the use of opaque off-balance-sheet financing (by keeping certain assets and liabilities off balance sheet, healthier financial metrics can be obtained).

First Brands are likely to disclose an issue with its factoring arrangements, factoring being a financing method tied to the future revenue of the company. The companies Board and creditors are investigating the issue.

Apollo Global Management (NYSE: APO), an asset-rich American asset management firm, due to publish Q3 results on November 4th, had a 1 year CDS on the debt of First Brands, paying out in the event of failure to make payments. This is a credit play, not an equity short per se, and only pays if First Brands suffers on its debt payments. The fact APO has maintained that position has been a signal to the market.

Greek-American investment manager Jim Chanos (short-seller of Enron - made money, short seller of Tesla - lost money) has slammed the "magical machine" of private credit in response.

CRISIL acquires McKinsey's PriceMetrix

PriceMetrix, which does benchmarking for wealth managers, has been acquired by S&P majority owned CRISIL for $38m.

Merger Speculation Engulfs Northern Trust

The Wall Street Journal reported in June that BNY (in full, the Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, NYSE: BK, which has seen solid share price growth over the past year, Q2 2025 revenue of $5bn) had approached Northern Trust about a potential merger. 

Northern Trust's Chairman and CEO (Mike O'Grady) retorted saying it remains committed to being fully independent. Mike has an MBA from Harvard Business School.

There have been hopes of looser regulation under Trump which would give a boost to banking M&A, however Senator Elizabeth Warren warned a merger could violate federal banking laws.

A major part of Northern Trust's business is asset servicing, which consists of administrative and operational tasks performed by custodians of financial assets on behalf of clients.

UBS shows strong profits and franchise strength in Q1 2025 with robust CET1

UBS has reported (30 April 2025) 2.1bn USD PBT (profit before tax) for Q1 2025 and a net profit of 1.7bn USD with RoCET1 of 9.6%.

Measures of franchise momentum have also been positive: this includes USD 32bn of net new assets into Global Wealth Management and USD 7bn of net new money into Asset Management.

UBS also calculates an underlying PBT and underlying RoCET1 which excludes P&L items which management consider not representative of underlying performance.  This gives a higher PBT number and higher RoCET1.

Capital position is strong with CET1 ratio of 14.3% and CET1 leverage ratio of 4.4% (banks have a requirement to keep their CET1 ratios above 4.5% to meet Basel standards with additional plus points if over 14%). UBS has stated this provides "a solid capital buffer to requirements during integration" (referring to Credit Suisse integration) and "given increased market volatility" (driven by US tariff policy changes).

The CET1 ratio is used to gauge a bank's solvency and capital strength.  

CET1 stands for Common Equity Tier 1 and measures the bank's "core capital" including common shares and retained earnings.  The BIS describes CET1 as the "highest quality of regulatory capital, as it absorbs losses immediately when they occur".

Tier 1 capital consists of CET1 and Additional Tier 1 (AT1) capital. Contingent convertibles (which can be converted into equity) and other kinds of hybrid securities qualify as AT1 capital. Typically these convertibles will have "triggers" to convert into common equity or be written off if CET1 ratios fall below a certain level.

Tier 2 capital consists of instruments other than common equity and is less discussed.

Growth including GenAI and cloud investments have included the roll-out of 50,000 Copilot licenses to employees (UBS has over 110,000 employees so this is under half of employees, including contractors), increased cloud usage to ~75% and an exclusive JV with 360 ONE on wealth management in India and international markets.

There are a few areas not covered by the broad results announcement - how well has Trading done, and how reliant is UBS on trading now relative to wealth and asset management.

MetLife Expands Asset Management

The asset management arm of MetLife which manages $600bn in assets is buying PineBridge Invesments from Pacific Century Group (with interests in TMT and real estate) owned by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li in a deal worth up to $1.2bn. Exclusions include PineBridge's private equity funds group and a joint venture in China named Huatai-PineBridge.

Goldman's Acquires Hague Based Investment Manager for 355 billion dollar European AuS Boost (With Caveats)

Goldman Sachs has agreed to acquire Hague-based NN Investment Partners for 1.6 billion Euros from NN Group NV.  The deal is expected to close end Q1 2022. The acquisition fits into GS' strategy to scale its European business. Assets under supervision will increase by approximately 355 billion dollars (some caveats over some mortgage assets which will continue to be managed by NN Group). GS has 2.3 trillion dollars in Assets under supervision globally.

Valuations in Softbank's Vision Fund Portfolio Hammered by China Regulatory Action

Ride-hailing app Didi Global listed in New York (NYSE:DIDI) but valuations were impacted by China regulatory action (investigation from the Cyberspace Administration of China), aimed at policing the huge datasets that Didi has access to, given its dominant market position in China. This has led to speculation of of a possible delisting.

Vision Fund CFO Navneet Govil (MBA, MEng from Cornell) has asserted the China thesis remains strong. Navneet former roles include SVP of Finance and Strategic Pricing at CA Technologies (which was acquired by Broadcom in July 2018).

Porfolio managers, such as Joshua Crabb of Robeco (part of ORIX Europe), have commented we are now in an age of unprecedented regulatory scrutiny over Tech not limited to China.

New Bank of England Governor (Bailey) Appointed

Andrew Bailey, chief executive of the FCA, has been appointed as the new governor of the Bank of England. The move is not without controversy, with the FCA being criticised over its supervision of Neil Woodford (formerly fund manager at Invesco Perpetual, since rebranded to Invesco)'s flagship fund which was suspended in June 2019 and eventually closed.

Who were the Best Fund Promoters in H1 2019 according to Lipper?

According to Lipper (an investment data firm founded in 1973 now owned by Thomson Reuters/Refintiv), the "best" fund promoter in H1 2019 was AXA.

AXA boasted net sales of 28.6 billion euro.

Blackrock came in second place with 23.1 billion euro, with PIMCO third at 23 billion euro.

Vanguard, who espouse the "four principles", came in at 9.9bn euros, less than 50% of PIMCOs sales.

Former UBS-owned entity GAM Restructures

Swiss fund manager GAM founded in 1983 by Gilbert de Botton, and later acquired by UBS in 1999, who sold it to Julius Baer, is executing on a restructuring plan put in place by David Jacob, interim Chief Executive, a dual UK-US citizen, who replaces Alexander Friedman, a former Chief Investment Officer at UBS Wealth Management with an MBA from Columbia. This involves consolidating various teams, including bringing European equities into a single team. In fixed income, four strategic areas have been identified - emerging markets, global credit, structured credit and global strategic bonds. Blackrock owns just over 3% of GAM.