Edinburgh's £8billion fund house Martin Currie is on a path to growth whilst retaining its autonomy, its new US parent has said.
Legg Mason, staging its first ever Edinburgh investment conference, said its acquisition last October of Martin Currie, headed since 2002 by Willie Watt, had not affected the manager's investment independence, whilst giving it new global opportunities for selling its funds.
Adam Gent, head of UK sales, told the conference: "We are not owned by an insurance company or a bank, we are a pure play investment manager, we live and die by performance.
"We operate a multi-subsidiary model, all of the nine investment houses we say are entirely independent, with different perspectives and views. Each has the scale of being part of a large organisation without losing their investment autonomy."
Mr Gent said Currie's arrival had given a major boost to the US firm's international capability. He added later: "From a Martin Currie perspective it means they get a global distribution force and broader capabilities, they have access to capital if they need it for new products, and hopefully they will see they are getting a lot of benefits."
The deal brought to an end 50 per cent ownership of the 134-year-old fund house by its employees, and an exit for US private equity group Crestview. Currie had bounced back from its first ever loss, following £8.8m of regulatory fines in the UK and US in 2012, and has already been boosted by the absorption of Legg Mason's Australian equities business.
Senior managers are understood to be tied into the firm for three years, with incentives linked entirely to the performance of Martin Currie.
The conference heard a range of views from managers at five of Legg Mason's affiliates, including four US-based firms, on current markets particularly Europe.
Andrew Belshaw, the London-based investment chief at California-based Western Asset, said quantitative easing in Europe and Japan was set to continue. "There is still plenty of policy accommodation coming in the world and that is positive for financial assets. Interest rates will remain low for a lot longer than many people expect and that is also positive for risk assets including equities."
He said the eurozone could now produce "strong growth" over the next 12 months. The UK meanwhile was highly sensitive to the cost of servicing personal debt, and also faced political risks to the cost of government borrowing "if international investors for whatever reason start to worry about the UK".
Gary Herbert, a manager at Philadelphia-based Brandywine Global, said eurozone QE was now narrowing the gap between the rate of economic growth and the cost of borrowing for SMEs, which was a positive signal. On Greece, he said: "My view is they are going to get to a compromise, it is in everyone's best interest."
Michael Browne, co-manager of Martin Currie's European Absolute Alpha hedge fund, said Greece was now a political issue not an economic threat as it was four years ago. "Everybody is trying to save face which is why I expect to see an agreement within the next few days. It is not going to derail the euro."
Mr Browne, whose fund has outperformed the market by a total 100 per cent since 2001, said Europe was seeing upward company earnings revisions for the first time in four years, and that would typically last for 18 months to two years.
"We should be thinking in terms of the next recession, in 2019-21," Mr Browne said. "It will be mild, and it will be about reducing labour, which is cheap and flexible - firms want to bring in labour they don't want to put in plant."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article