Which geographic markets have become more important in terms of sales in the past year?
Our markets are each at different levels of maturity. So I would say the UK and Switzerland, two of our main markets, are more mature but are still evolving.
We are also very active in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and Germany, where we have hired a very experienced ex-deputy head of institutional sales at Invesco to run our capabilities from the office we have there.
In other areas, client interaction has led us to establish a local presence. We opened in Paris and Madrid last year, for example, and also in Bogota, where we have a significant private equity presence.
Italy is also a key market where we have an intermediary focus. But last year we were also able to bring on a private equity team in a strategic partnership with Intesa Sanpaolo, which is of course the dominant bank in Italy.
That has meant that what was a representative office of three people, is now a representative plus investment office with about 18 people. That is exciting because it increases our traction in Italy, lifting the locality to a new level.
How is Neuberger Berman currently positioning itself on fees relative to its peers worldwide?
Like any asset management firm, we work in a very competitive environment. We are generally partnering with sophisticated intermediaries, specifically private banks. These are typically partnerships where the commercial arrangements have been agreed on an in-depth basis. We are very thoughtful about it and when we bring something to market, it needs to have real relevance and we need to be differentiated.
We tend to have less constrained portfolios or a focus in asset classes where it would be, in our view, ineffective to go passive, such as high yield or emerging market debt, where you need a good active asset manager to navigate the difficulties. That protects us a little bit from the most brutal fee pressure.
Which Neuberger Berman funds or underlying asset types have grown or fallen in popularity over the past year?
Neuberger Berman has been very active in US equities, high yield and emerging market debt within our Ucits range. We have seen some outflows in US equities funds, in line with the industry. High yield has been very volatile over the past few years, but, funnily enough, although there were significant outflows in 2015, there have also been continued strong inflows, meaning the overall flow across the strategy remains fairly flat.
Emerging market debt is really interesting. We hired a number of people who became our emerging market debt team in 2013, and we have seen a huge amount of growth since then, raising close to $7bn and winning considerable market share from other emerging market debt providers.
How significant is the appointment of David Rowe as head of marketing EMEA in your plans?
We have been very fortunate in how the Neuberger Berman brand has gained traction during the past five years. Our Ucits range and our overall investment footprint have grown as has the complexity of the business.
