According to sources at some well-known and well-loved fund houses, cost-cutting plans are being revisited just in case the current crisis develops and they are similar to those put in action during the 2008 financial crisis.
Indeed, earlier this week F&C announced it would be making redundancies in order to save £21.2m by 2013, with £16.6m coming from staff reductions.
Not so at Baring Asset Management.
In the last month alone, as a continuation of a recruitment drive started this spring, Barings has hired three people: Michael Simpson as head of Latin American equities, William Palmer as investment director on the GEM equities team and John Burns as COO.
Ian Pascal, head of marketing and communications, said: "If you break it down into the areas we have got good credentials in already, we are looking to expand them: emerging markets, asset allocation and specialist fixed income."
He said earlier in the year Barings had a couple of people of leave, but in addition to the three appointments this month, there have been three others since April.
These were Thomas Kwan as head of Asian debt, Wilfrid Sit as CIO for Barings Asset Management Asia and the re-hiring of Clive Burstow as director and resources investment manager.
What’s more, over the next six months, the firm is planning to expand further.
More to come
Pascal said another Latin American manager was in the pipeline and an addition to each of the fixed income and asset allocation teams was on the way.
On the asset allocation front, Pascal said multi-asset products had shown their worth during the tough market conditions currently evident.
There are also plans to fill product gaps the company has, by using the expertise of the newly expanded teams to tap into emerging trends.
Pascal would not specify exactly what the products launches would include, but agreed that local currency fixed income was a developing market trend.
Barings already has an Emerging Markets Debt Local Currency Fund, but that does not hold local currency Chinese debt, according to the September factsheet.
Given the raft of Renminbi debt funds launched in the past few weeks, from Allianz Global Investors and HSBC to name but two, it would not be unreasonable for an EM expert like Barings to enter that market too.
The return of Clive Burstow and his wealth of experience in the resources sector also dovetails nicely with the idea of more commodity product launches.
In these times of uncertainty, it’s encouraging to see signs of courage and conviction from an investment house and I for one will be interested to see what Barings does next.
