IN THE weeks since Westpac announced the purchase of BT, alongside that of Sagitta, speculation has been rife about who will stay, what jobs they will hold and who will leave. BT’s head of equities Marcus Fanning fell into the latter category.
In other news last week, Perpetual’s head of equities Peter Morgan announced he would be leaving, while earlier this year Greg Perry at Colonial said he would also be moving on.
Days after each of these announcements various research houses made comments about what these departures would mean and what actions they would take in regards to their ratings of the groups and funds involved. But should financial planners take heed of any of these messages being sent out from research houses? Should funds or managers be kept at arms length while succession issues are sorted out? Consider the following.
In December last year Morningstar sacked its chairman and is locked in a protracted court battle. Earlier this year, van Eyk Research was set to merge with Mercers, called it off and then announced a host of new stakeholders. InvestorWeb has recently been picked up by Iress and Assirt was dragged back into the Sealcorp fold earlier this year, and a number of senior figures have left.
Yet no-one is questioning the capability and durability of those who ask such questions themselves about fund managers.
Recently in a discussion withMoney Management,a planner said they tend to ignore what most research houses have to say about funds management groups and instead look at issues such as the performance of the group in the past and the likelihood of that group performing as well in the future.
It may be a simplistic way of viewing the world but was the planner out of step in doing so? He thinks not because all he has done is apply to research houses and their products the same measures they apply to fund managers.
