CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrEnrique Rodríguez. Enrique Rodríguez Will Manage a Mexico and Colombia Fund by Beamonte Investments
Beamonte Investments has announced the launch of Venture Academy Fund (“VAF”), a Venture Capital Fund targeting opportunities in Mexico and Colombia.
VAF will target high-growth startups and ventures that take advantage of market opportunities through online platforms, mobile applications, technology, and others. The fund will focus on Series A investments, as competition is lower in this section of the VC market. The VC market is at a growth stage were VAF can enter and take advantage of the favorable entrepreneurial ecosystem in Mexico and Colombia to generate returns for investors.
Enrique Rodriguez, a former investment banker of Grupo Bursatil Mexicano, will lead the Fund. Rodriguez has several years of experience in structuring funds, debt issuing, IPOs, and Mergers and Acquisitions. Rodriguez holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from ITAM as well as a MBA from Hult International Business School. “I’m exited to be leading an effort like Venture Academy Fund with a platform like Beamonte Investments, one of the premiere Investments firms operating in Mexico with an exeptional track record,” said Rodriguez.
VAF will target to raise between 10 to 15M USD and will make investments between 500 thousand and 1.5M USD each. The primary sourse of deal flow will be Venture Academy bootcamps over the next few years. Venture Academy is an educational platform for training entrepreneurs how to raise money through a four day intensive boot camp designed to provide attendees with the information, guidance, and advice to run their businesses. Claudia Yan Director of Venture Academy, an educational program launched by Beamonte in 2014 that educates entrepreneurs in Mexico and is planning to start operations by 2016 commented, “VAF is the perfect match for Venture Academy. We educate and VAF will invest in the talent is perfect way to create synergies and help entrepreneurs of both countries to achieve their goals.”
Luis Felipe Trevino, Senior Managing Director of Beamonte Investments commented, “We are thrilled to announce VAF along side with Enrique and Claudia we believe is a perfect match to capture premiere deals in Mexico and Colombia, two of the highest growing economies in Latin America. Beamonte has a significant track record in the region and we believe that we can add a tremendous amount of value to entrepreneurs in both countries.”
On his weekly commentary, Bob Doll, chief equity strategist and senior portfolio manager at Nuveen Investments, expressed his thoughts on what happened in the markets during 2015, and shared his predictions for 2016.
For investors, this past year was difficult, but not disastrous. A weather-induced U.S. economic slowdown kicked off 2015, and headlines declared a possible messy exit by Greece from the Eurozone. During the summer, a decelerating Chinese economy led to the surprising devaluation of the yuan. In August, this helped trigger a massive drop in U.S. equity markets. As the fall began, investors grew uneasy over the prospects of Federal Reserve tightening. A late-year meltdown in commodities hurt resource-based industries and economies around the world. Geopolitical crises, terrorism and a bizarre U.S. political backdrop all helped boost uncertainty.
The chief headwind for equities was weak corporate earnings. Not surprisingly, the rising U.S. dollar and falling oil prices hurt the energy, materials and industrials sectors. However, these same factors failed to lift consumer-oriented and other “energy-using” sectors. The key to determining the direction of equities next year may well be the direction of corporate earnings.
Despite the negativity and uncertainty, the investing world saw several bright spots in 2015. The U.S. economy grew modestly and unemployment declined significantly. The housing and banking sectors improved. Consumer spending remained strong. The federal deficit fell sharply. And equity markets proved to be resilient, despite downward pressure. Will next year be dominated by the negatives? Will the positives win? Or will confusion and uncertainty continue? With this backdrop, Rob Doll offers his predictions for 2016:
U.S. real GDP remains below 3% and nominal GDP below 5% for an unprecedented tenth year in a row.
U.S. Treasury rates rise for a second year, but high yield spreads fall.
S&P 500 earnings make limited headway as consumer spending advances are partially offset by oil, the dollar and wage rates.
For the first time in almost 40 years, U.S. equities experience a single-digit percentage change for the second year in a row.
Stocks outperform bonds for the fifth consecutive year.
Non-U.S. equities outperform domestic equities, while non-U.S. fixed income outperforms domestic fixed income.
Information technology, financials and telecommunication services outperform energy, materials and utilities.
Geopolitics, terrorism and cyberattacks continue to haunt investors but have little market impact.
The federal budget deficit rises in dollars and as a percentage of GDP for the first time in seven years.
Republicans retain the House and the Senate and capture the White House.
Overall, Rob Doll expects that 2016 will present difficulties for investors, but he still believes there are reasons for optimism. If globaleconomic growth broadens and improves, that could allow corporate revenues and earnings to strengthen. Such a backdrop, combined with still-low inflation and still-easy monetary policy, should allow equities to improve further. Rob Doll encourages investors to maintain overweight positions in equities, and expects 2016 will be another year in which selectivity is paramount to investors’ success.
Belgian companies Petercam Institutional Asset Management and Degroof Fund Management Company have merged on 4 January to form one entity called Degroof Petercam Asset Management (Degroof Petercam AM).
The merger comes in the aftermath of these between Belgian groups Bank Degroof and Petercam that has taken place in October 2015.
Degroof Petercam AM has €25bn of assets under management and tallies 140 employees.
Its management board is composed of president Hugo Lasat, Tomás Murillo, Thomas Palmblad, Guy Lerminiaux, Philippe Denef, Peter De Coensel and Vincent Planche.
Photo: Sarath Kuchi
. Houston and Washington DC: The Best Cities in the US to Get Rich
Not in every city you can build a fortune. Even if the biggest cities in the US are the most attractive for those willing to do it, you should analyze a series of criteria in order to choose the right one. Houston, Washington DC, Cleveland, Detroit, and New York are the best 5 cities in the country to build a fortune, according to Bankrate. Dallas-Fort Worth, Baltimore, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul and Chicago, complete the Top 10.
In order to rank the 18 largest metro areas in the country, Bankrate analyzed after-tax savable income, the job market, human capital (indicating available educational opportunities for career advancement), access to financial services, participation in retirement savings plans, and the local housing market in each city.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: Scott Beale. Henderson: “Companies That Are Reliant Solely on A Cyclical Upturn to Grow Their Revenues Present an Elevated Level of Risk”
Ian Warmerdam and Ronan Kelleher, Managers of the Henderson Global Growth Strategy, believe that concentrating on secular growth in 2016, particularly within innovative themes, while maintaining a strict valuation discipline, is a prudent approach to generating attractive long-term returns.
What lessons have you learned from 2015?
2015 has again felt like a year of mediocre global economic growth, broadly speaking, and we believe that companies that are reliant solely on a cyclical upturn to grow their revenues present an elevated level of risk. This year has reinforced our belief that concentrating on truly secular growth, while maintaining a strict valuation discipline, is a prudent approach to generating attractive long-term returns.
Are you more or less positive than you were this time last year, and why?
We claim no ability to predict the short-term direction of the markets so our strategy remains unchanged. We continue to operate with our five-year investment horizon at a stock level and have confidence that our philosophy and process will continue to deliver strong absolute and relative returns over this longer-term timeframe.
What are the key themes likely to shape your asset class going forward and how are you likely to position your portfolios as a result?
Our strategy remains to avoid making major macroeconomic calls, and to instead focus on using our bottom-up approach to find companies that are benefitting from underappreciated secular growth and high barriers to entry, at attractive valuations. As we look into 2016, we continue to see compelling investment opportunities within our five existing themes: Healthcare Innovation, Internet Transformation, Emerging Markets Growth, Paperless Payment and Energy Efficiency.
Within Healthcare Innovation, for example, we are attracted by the demographic changes at play as an ageing global population struggles to contain ever rising healthcare costs. Increases in life expectancy mean that the global 60+ age group is expected to double by 2050 to two billion people. CVS Health, the US pharmacy chain, provides an integrated healthcare service for its customers and looks set to benefit from these demographic shifts.
Rightmove is a leading online UK property listings company that sits within our Internet Transformation theme and should continue to benefit from the structural shift in advertising spend from offline to online. Within Energy Efficiency investments include companies that increase vehicle efficiency such as Continental, a Germany-based automotive supplier, Valeo, a multi-national automotive supplier based in France, along with Delphi, a US auto component manufacturer.
Despite a general consensus in the financial advice community that saving for retirement should trump paying for a child’s college education, nearly half of Americans disagree. According to a recent poll from RBC Wealth Management-U.S. conducted by Ipsos, 49 percent of Americans place greater importance on helping their children pay for their education than they do on saving for their own retirement.
“As the cost of a college education in the U.S. continues to rise, parents will naturally want to help their kids get through school without accumulating a mountain of debt,” said John Taft, CEO of RBC Wealth Management in the U.S. “But with the gap between how much Americans have saved and what they will need to retire comfortably widening, we advise that people make funding their own retirement a priority. There are no grants, scholarships, or federally guaranteed loans to support them when they leave the workforce.”
Millennials (ages 18 to 34) are the most likely to prioritize financing their children’s education ahead of their own retirement. In fact, 60 percent of Americans in that age group said saving for their kids’ education was more important to them, compared with 43 percent of GenXers (ages 35 to 54) and only 28 percent of Baby Boomers (ages 55 and older).
“These results likely also reflect both philosophical and practical differences between generations,” said Malia Haskins of the Wealth Strategies Group at RBC Wealth Management-U.S. “For Millennials, retirement is much farther away than the more immediate challenge of putting kids through college, so it makes sense that they would put retirement on the back burner. Baby Boomers tend to believe that children should be self-motivated and should have some skin in the game when paying for college. GenXers, meanwhile, are somewhere in the middle. They want to pay for most if not all of college costs for their children, but they also may be nearing retirement and wanting to balance the two goals.”
While saving for retirement should be the priority, by planning and setting realistic goals it is possible for many families to meet both objectives, Haskins says. Planning is especially critical for families with lower household incomes. According to the RBC Wealth Management survey, Americans with household incomes under $50,000 were the most likely (57 percent) to place saving for a child’s education ahead of their own retirement needs.
“Sometimes families find they can fund their retirement and still contribute to a child’s education,” Haskins said. “By looking ahead a little bit, it’s easier to get an overall sense of whether their goals are realistic.”
These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted on behalf of RBC from October 6 to October 9, 2015. For the survey, a sample of n=2009 Americans was interviewed online via Ipsos’s American online panel, of which 569 are parents with children in the household. The precision of Ipsos online surveys is measured using a Bayesian credibility interval. In this case, with a sample of this size, the results are considered accurate to within ± 4.7 percentage points percentage points, 19 times out of 20, of what they would have been had all American parents been polled.
Research from global analytics firm Cerulli Associates finds that exchange-traded fund (ETF) assets in the United States will grow to more than $6 trillion by 2020, and this number can potentially increase if more asset managers enter the space. Cerulli believes the slow erosion of mutual fund assets by exchange-traded products will prompt a growing number of asset managers to enter the ETF market.
“While many sponsor firms believe the ETF market will continue to grow organically, growth will largely be a result of more investors using the low-cost vehicle,” explains Jennifer Muzerall, senior analyst at Cerulli. “As new investor segments continue to acclimate to ETFs in their portfolios and sponsors develop new products, ETF assets are expected to climb as the industry enters its second decade.”
Cerulli’s report, Exchange-Traded Fund Markets 2015: Opportunities in the Face of Changing Dynamics, analyzes asset managers that manufacture and distribute ETFs in the U.S. The report focuses on the distribution and trends in the ETF market, including active ETFs and strategic beta ETFs, institutional distribution, marketing, and staffing.
“With more asset managers developing an ETF strategy, product proliferation will continue to increase, and firms will need to think strategically about the types of products they develop, attempting to fill any white space that remains untouched,” Muzerall explains. “As investor sentiment is evolving toward solutions-oriented outcomes, sponsors need to think of ETFs no longer solely as a product, but as a tool for investors to achieve their investment objectives.”
Aegon Asset Management created the role of Director of U.S. Consultant Relations, in the middle of December. Fulfilling the new position is Ainsley Borel, who is responsible for distribution of the institutional investment strategies and services offered by Aegon Asset Management’s U.S. member companies to insurers, pension plans, and other benefit plans.
Aegon Asset Management is the global, active investment management arm of Aegon N.V., with centers of investment expertise in Europe and the United States and distribution across the Americas, Europe and Asia. The Aegon Asset Management U.S. member companies include Aegon USA Investment Management, LLC, a SEC-registered investment adviser and manager of fixed income and asset-allocation investment strategies, and Aegon USA Realty Associates, LLC, a real estate asset manager.
“Building strong relationships with institutional consultants is an important element of Aegon Asset Management’s growth strategy in the United States,” said Tom Neukranz, Head of Distribution for Aegon Asset Management U.S. “We are very pleased to have a veteran of Ainsley’s caliber and experience join us in expanding and enhancing relations with the consultant community.”
During 22 years in the investment industry, Borel has managed the distribution of both off-the-shelf investment products and customized investment solutions. Most recently, Borel was a senior vice president and senior consultant relationship manager at Northern Trust Asset Management, responsible for relationships with major domestic and global investment consulting firms.
“Aegon Asset Management U.S. offers what consultants and their clients are looking for in a quality asset manager – a well-defined investment process, strong product line, and experienced investment teams,” said Borel. “I am eager to begin sharing the Aegon Asset Management story with them.”
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrStephen Acheson, director ejecutivo en Standard Life Investments. Foto cedida. Aumenta el apetito por el riesgo entre las aseguradoras europeas
According to a survey conducted by Standard Life Investments, European insurers feel they are unlikely to be able to generate sufficient future returns to meet guaranteed rates for all their policyholders, and that regulatory modernisation and change may make it more challenging for traditional business models to strengthen income streams and make necessary strategic asset allocation changes.
The survey identified five key themes:
Increasingly, European insurers may no longer be able to generate sufficient future returns to meet guaranteed rates to policyholders.
The expected future annual return (based on existing investment strategies) of 2.4% is below the 2.7% respondents need to meet future policyholder requirements (based on current guarantee levels).
In response, many European insurers are considering undertaking significant strategic (SAA) and tactical asset allocation (TAA) changes to improve yield.
Risk appetite appears to be rising. Half of insurers expect to reduce sovereign fixed income exposure, while over 60% expect to increase allocations to real estate and/or alternatives.
However, the survey highlights a ‘north/south’ divide on asset allocation, with Southern European countries having more confidence in existing investment strategies due in part to higher domestic yields on their sovereign fixed income.
Insurers’ investment freedom is affected by Solvency II.
73% of insurers indicated that the forthcoming EU Directive is affecting the way they design investment portfolios as the taking of asset risk now requires appropriate risk-capital and a fuller understanding of the risks being taken.
Outsourcing asset management activity is increasingly attractive, but there are concerns about fund management capacity and the number of asset managers able to meet complex insurer requirements.
44% of European insurers are looking to outsource management of one or more asset classes.
Insurer business models and profitability are under pressure from a structural shift away from guaranteed savings to unit-linked structures.
43% of insurers stated they were unable to price new guaranteed investment products at competitive rates.
When the survey was conducted over the summer, European insurers felt they had further work to do before they would be completely ready for Solvency II. As evidenced by the many internal model approvals that have been announced recently, very good progress has been made in the interim. 56 interviews were carried out with senior insurance investment executives representing over €2.4trn, or around 30%, of pan-European insurance assets under management.
Stephen Acheson, Executive Director, Standard Life Investments said: “European insurers’ business strategies and traditional business models are being fundamentally challenged due to the combination of the long-term low return environment, Solvency II and the ongoing need to deliver on promised guarantees. The survey highlighted a clear theme of insurers looking to outsource to the external asset management industry. However, it also highlights a belief among insurers that the number of credible outsourcing partners is declining. It is important to remember that Solvency II was conceived and developed in a very different economic environment. Since our survey completed, fundamental questions about the design and performance of the Solvency II balance sheet in the current low interest rate environment have begun to be raised. For example, in the UK the PRA has recently pointed out that, as a consequence of low interest rates, the risk margin is leading to higher capital requirements and volatility. So the Solvency II development and implementation issues that the European industry has been working on over recent years will certainly not end on 1 January 2016.”
Standard Life Investments has 69 insurance clients investing balance sheet assets in over 20 countries, representing an AUM of £137bn as of the second quarter of 2015.
Looking at emerging market equities, there is reason to believe the tide is about to turn for the better. It is, however, likely to be a divergent and volatile process but 2016 should be a good opportunity to selectively start to build up exposure to emerging markets again, especially as the downside risks have fallen.
There are four main reasons behind our careful optimism.
First, emerging markets have not wasted the crisis. Most major emerging markets’ currencies have adjusted more than the EUR, which has dropped 20% against the USD over the past five years. Similarly, the current account adjustment has been significant and especially important in economies like Turkey, Poland and India that use to run large deficits.
Second, emerging markets offer the best value, growth and yield combination. There is a big spread in absolute and relative valuations across the emerging universe, but most emerging markets are expected to trade lower than their respective five-year valuation average in 2016 with emerging markets at a 15% compared to 5% for developed markets. Emerging markets are not only cheaper in absolute and relative terms than developed markets, they are also expected to have higher earnings growth and dividend yields.
Third, the EM/DM growth ratio will re-accelerate. The relative growth ratio between emerging and developed markets seems to be correlated with the relative stock market performance. IMF expects emerging markets’ growth to gradually accelerate from 4% this year to 5.3% in 2020 while developed markets’ growth will stay flat around 2% over the same period. This means that the DM/EM growth ratio, which has fallen during the past five years, is set to start a five-year re-acceleration in 2016.
Finally, US rate hikes tend to be supportive for emerging market equities. Perhaps contrary to popular perception, emerging market assets tend to outperform the year after a US rate hike. The reasons are very basic but nevertheless fundamental; economies adjust and markets discount the rate move ahead of time, and the reason for hikes – that the US economy is doing rather well – is supportive for emerging economies.
