From The Editor

Editorial of Issue 1

Welcome to the launch issue of Investment Management Review. What do we plan to do for you over the next few years?

External scrutiny and soul-searching within the industry continue, resulting in a regular stream of prognostications by industry insiders, consultants and others. Deep-seated problems previously obscured by the easy profits of the late ‘90s are still being discussed and debated.

These relate to what it takes to win in the developing free-for-all, given the perception of industry overcapacity and the belief that the best days are over. Of course, recent developments have not all been negative.

New competitive and structural forces that emerged during the bull market era are now gathering force, posing opportunities as well as challenges to fund managers. An example is the controversial subject of open architecture, which is covered in two articles in this issue.

Keeping in touch with all the diverse developments of the multifaceted fund management industry is getting tougher. Not that there is a shortage of information. The problem is the sheer number and diversity of reports, conferences, websites and periodicals, including those specialising in the wide range of industry sectors, such as hedge funds, private equity, pensions, mutual funds and distribution. Busy executives find it difficult to monitor all this and yet need to stay informed. We will help by screening out items of transient value and focusing only on issues of long-term significance.

Moreover, quality reporting is widely encountered but good succinct analysis is more infrequent. Investment Management Review will help you on two fronts. Firstly, we will have articles written with in-depth understanding of the industry by expert researchers, enabling you to keep abreast of the issues surrounding key developments and topics.

Secondly, part of the magazine will be a digest where we review and comment upon some of the most pertinent of what others have said. In particular we survey many academic and professional journals. Unfortunately, a good deal of their content is written by academics principally for other academics, and is often neither comprehensible nor of interest to practitioners. But frequently there are nuggets which deserve industry attention. These will be brought to you by this magazine, which will thereby act as a bridge between the academic and practitioner worlds. For this launch issue, we have selected from sources going back further than will be the case in the future.

It is useful to survey where the industry is now compared to a few years ago and where it might be in a few years’ time. Five to ten years ago hedge funds were still the preserve of the wealthy. Open architecture was not the buzzword it is today. Particularly during the dotcom years of the later ‘90s money was easy to make and clients easy to find. Professionalism was not at a premium, but has now been rediscovered as essential.

Many currently fashionable ideas have been around for years, if not decades, without sustained and widespread acceptance, and their new-found popularity could yet again prove ephemeral. On the other hand, the chances are that the forces that will shape the industry in the next decade are also in place. The question is: which of the current trends will prevail and which will peter out? The answers are unlikely to lie in extrapolation. Only analysis of the underlying factors can lead to the insights which we will endeavour to provide.

Charting the outcomes will be fascinating.

Arjuna Sittampalam
Editor