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One Scoop: Blackstone Group sold its first Eagle Investment Management for over $4 billion to try to offload the large stocks it has owned by US private equity groups for 10 years.
And one event: I will be in Abu Dhabi this week for the first future of the Asset Management Middle East Conference. Let’s meet there.
In today’s newsletter:
Activist Elliot shakes BP from strategic poor performance
Vanguard is planning to play Disruptor again
Our egg prices rise as bird flu crosses the farm
Pirates from the “American Bay”
A year ago, Elliott’s executives called out oil majors to reduce green spending, questioning whether they would endanger backlash from environmentalists and the media.
How did time change? Last week it was revealed that Elliott has become BP’s third largest shareholder behind BlackRock and Vanguard alone.
The energy team at the New York headquarters at its head office has printed a T-shirt featuring the “American Gulf” featuring Donald Trump’s photographs, honoring the Gulf of Mexico’s president’s priority name. It’s there. .
Elliott was busy building stock in the already troubled company as BP’s stock sank to its two-year low last November.
This move began to pay off. BP’s stock has grown more than 26% from its low, with Trump’s “drills, babes, drills” screaming lifting moods around oil and gas companies, focusing on the core business of fossil fuel sales It’s there.
The activists’ arrival sets a critical test of BP’s CEO Murray Auchincloss on the capital market day of February 26th. Frustrated by the group’s lack of direction, Auchicloss promised to “a fundamental reset” the strategy of his predecessor. Energy transition business and building a portfolio of wind, solar, biofuels, hydrogen and more.
According to anyone familiar with the idea of hedge funds, Elliott’s view is that BP must make significant sales, including the green energy business. They said that disbanding or selling was not currently on the activists’ agenda.
What was needed was “an offensive chair leading an aggressive committee with the CEO who was able to get into the strategy.” The BP formula was simple. “It’s a strong capital allocation, a cost sizing, a sale plan, a strategy reset. It makes sure that shareholders who stick to the company will be rewarded. It’s a basic pivot.”
Dive into the inner story of how Elliott rocked BP from a strategic poor.
Vanguard is planning to play Disruptor again
Vanguard has fundamentally restructured its stock investments. The relentless focus on low-cost and simple products that track indexes rather than stocks helps you become the second largest money manager in the world, with 10.1tn assets under management and has a client base of over 9 million direct investors.
For much of its history, Vanguard was primarily responsible for retirement plans for do-it-yourself investors and employees. Online offerings were clunky compared to their rivals, and their customer service lines were limited, but investors were rewarded with low prices that led to excellent profits.
Vanguard is now targeting other parts of the financial services industry, as he forced rival asset managers to cut fees and rethink business models built around stock picking.
Salim Ramji, a former BlackRock executive who became the first outsider to lead the group last summer, is leading the way into investment advice, actively managed bond funds and cash accounts. The strategy aims to make Vanguard a financial destination for a new generation of investors and allow them to compete more aggressively with clients outside the US centre.
“They adopted the best indexing possible,” says Dan Wiener, who founded an investment advisory business and newsletter focused on the company’s funds.
But the shift comes as many rival asset managers are currently matching it at rates, but Fintech startups are young investments with sophisticated apps, free stock trading and algorithm-driven online advice I’m begging the house. Vanguard needs to raise its own products to compete.
Challenging financial advice was contrary to the instincts of late founder Jack Bogle, who spent his life urging investors to “minimise the take of Crewpeier.”
“It’s really a matter of scale,” says Dan Sotirov, a senior analyst at Morningstar who is chasing Vanguard. “They’re getting so big that they have to deliver what they promise to their clients.”
Brookmasters visit Vanguard’s headquarters outside of Pennsylvania to tell you how the company has built a passive investment powerhouse and why it needs to improve its technology and services to play Disruptor again Don’t miss out on the big reading.
This week’s chart
Our egg prices are skyrocketing to raise the highs as farmers are forced to massacre millions of chickens in order to stop the spread of bird flu.
This week, the wholesale market reached over $8 in total, more than $8 in total, according to Expana, a commodity pricing information service. Grocers, including Walmart and Kroger, have begun purchasing rations in certain cases. The Waffle House chain (a staple in the Southern and Midwest) costs an extra 50 cents of eggs to cook.
The supply of fresh eggs is scarce as farmers cull millions of hens to control variants of avian influenza, which first appeared in US commercial flocks three years ago.
Similar to gasoline prices, eggs are visible signs of volatile inflation to consumers. The consumer price index rose 3% year-on-year in January, while the egg index rose more than 50%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday. The average US resident will eat about 270 eggs this year, a USDA forecast of about 270 eggs.
Egg prices are also politically resonated, and were the offensive line in last year’s White House campaign. US vice presidential candidate JD Vance then stood before the supermarket egg incident and criticised the economic policies of his predecessor, Kamala Harris. . The price was $4.95 in January.
Democrats are currently seizing the issue. “We went to get eggs and you can see that the prices of these eggs jumped to around $8. But Democrats from California, Ted Liu, has been a recent grocery store. I said last week on a trip to.
This week’s 5 unacceptable stories
BlackRock is awarding CEO Larry Fink the sweetener of interest for the first time, highlighting the growing importance of the private market for the world’s largest asset managers.
Ken Griffin hedge fund Citadel has placed a £355 million bet on drug maker GSK, the largest short position in the company in over a decade.
This year, a stronger dollar and higher bond yield bet backfired as investors look more beneathly at the new US administration’s economic fallout from the world trade war.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management aims to become the “leading provider” of European Active Exchanged Funds as UK investors prepare for Schroders and Jupiter to enter this part of the market.
Institutional investors with 1.5 tonnes of funds, including Scottish Widows, People’s Partnerships and Brunel Pension Partnerships, have ordered their asset managers to either strengthen climate action or risk being dumped.
And finally
Hampstead Heath Mixed Swimming Pond ©Alex Segre/Alamy
I agree with all the words of this glorious love letter to Hampstead Heath by FT Globetrotter editor Rebecca Rose. The experience of swimming in the silky, silky waters of a pond is beautifully captured in the pond. Swims in the Hampstead Ladies Pond, a collection of contemporary essays.
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