In The News

“The markets are still driven by humans,” Kevin McPartland told ValueWalk. While acknowledging that technology can’t monitor all trader interactions, compliance oversight can improve, he said.

Kevin McPartland recalled his experience in the 1990s, when he worked in information technology in an equities unit at one of the biggest Wall Street banks. 

A survey of US institutional investors by Greenwich Associates, a market intelligence firm, showed that 97% of respondents had dedicated investments in real assets. 

Virtually all trading today involves electronic algorithms in some fashion, but some are more complex than others. Banks charge clients about four times the rate for the most complex individual “high touch” trades than ones that simply follow a pre-...

While asset owners still care about manager selection and due diligence efforts, they are focusing more on a “holistic” approach like portfolio construction, says Sara Sikes at Greenwich Associates.

Kevin McPartland at Greenwich Associates, on BlackRock’s move to replace people with machines, and shifts in the asset management landscape.

Research conducted by Greenwich Associates in late 2015 also identified a shift towards algorithmic trading and TCA to drive greater transparency and accountability in the wake of the FX benchmark scandal.

While asset owners still care about manager selection and due diligence efforts, they are focusing more on a “holistic” approach like portfolio construction, says Sara Sikes at Greenwich Associates.

Richard Johnson,“in both this and best execution we will see a lot of ‘soft compliance’ from firms in the US, where they more or less bring their standards up to the new bar being set by MiFID II, both to make their global operations more efficient...

Thanks to the European Union’s MiFID II regulations, which require asset managers to separate trading commissions from investment-research payments, asset managers are set to cut more than $300 million from research budgets over the next year. This...