The Global Investment Report

The United Nations estimates the world needs $5-7 trillion to address its largest and most challenging problems. While governments and non-profits will have a meaningful role to play, the private market will play the most important role in identifying, developing and scaling effective solutions. Education, medicine, financial inclusion and climate sectors will all be revolutionized by private sector technology and innovation. The purpose of this talk is to describe the ways in which impact investing is set to become the most important economic driver in the 21st Century because, and not in spite of, the social and societal needs.

With Bloomberg predicting thematic ETFs could reach $300 billion in 5 years[1], the outlook for ETFs is positive. Asset managers, banks and insurance companies are looking at ETFs as a serious strategic opportunity that will enable them to grow and meet the needs of modern investors.

We’ll be joined by Hector McNeil, an ETF veteran and Co-CEO of Europe’s first white-label ETF provider, to discuss the growth of ETFs and what investors can expect to see in the near future.

We will also be joined by North American asset managers from the cloud computing, healthcare innovation, online retail, digital infrastructure and medical cannabis sectors to discuss the growing adoption of ETFs and the outlook for their respective sectors.

In this webinar we will explore:
- The growth of ETFs in Europe
- ETF liquidity
- Thematic ETFs
- Outlook

Speakers:
Hector McNeil, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of HANetf
Anthony Ginsberg, Managing Director, GinsGlobal Investment Management
Chris Versace, Chief Investment Officer, Tematica Research
Greg Taylor, Portfolio Manager, Purpose Investments
Jane Edmondson, Co-Founder & Principal, EQM Indexes

TBD

Speakers:
Martijn Rozemuller, CEO Europe, VanEck
Brandon Rakszawski, Senior ETF Product Manager, VanEck

Chinese stocks produced one of the strongest returns of major equity markets in 2020, a welcome result for those betting on China’s rapid economic growth and low correlation with other global markets. On top of a compelling beta story, roughly 85% of trading in China is done by amateur retail investors, leading to rampant mispricings and the potential for intelligent strategies to yield large behavioral alpha. At the same time, mainland China’s markets carry an array of special risks, from questionable accounting and often confusing regulations to state-owned companies with weak governance and poor performance—the quintessential value traps.

As China’s economy becomes “too big to ignore”, ETF investors looking for exposure will need navigate these unique challenges and opportunities. In this talk, Phillip Wool, Rayliant’s Head of Investment Solutions and a portfolio manager of Rayliant’s Quantamental China Equity ETF (RAYC), will explain why active management is an essential piece of the investing puzzle for Chinese stocks.

Phillip will cover the pitfalls of passive ETF design in a retail-dominated market with a nuanced investment landscape, and explain how an active approach to building ETFs for China A shares manages risk and exploits behavioral bias to fully capture the benefits Chinese equities have to offer.

Is 2021 the year of actively managed bond funds?

The growth in choices of bond funds ranging from passive to active continues. What you need to know about the myths and realities of the bond market and fund performance.

Join this discussion as we cover:
-The risks in manager selection
-The hard choice to make: active management or passive?
-Bond funds or ETFs: strengths & weaknesses of both
- When bonds go from boring to bad

The Global Economy at the beginning of this year was hit by arguably two black swan events. The collapse of OPEC-Russia cooperation on oil production has triggered a financial market shock. This event was however dwarfed by a coronavirus-induced growth shock on an unprecedented scale. Theoretically, we should have been prepared.

We live in an era of rapidly changing global landscapes and local environments. Viruses with RNA as their genetic material can quickly adapt to and exploit these varying conditions” – This and similar quotes, which were warning us even more explicitly about a potential pandemic, we could have read in books published already five or even 10 years ago. And indeed the risk – the “spread of infectious diseases” - featured as second on the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk by impact register in 2015. Yet, just a year later it went down to 8th position and has featured even lower than that (in 10th place) in the last 3 years. 'Climate action failure' and 'weapons of mass distraction' risks took over the prominent positions on the risk register.

But how are companies preparing for and hedging against low probability, high impact risks?

Should black swans events be hedged against or is this an ‘opportunity’ to re-design business models?

Can these risks be hedged and/or insured? At what cost (if at all)?

Who ‘owns’ these risks in the organisation and how can Boards add the most value?

Are issues like Climate Preparedness put aside or are they take on a new meaning?



These and many more aspects we will be discussing with our excellent panel:

Andrew Gates – CEO – Macquarie Bank Europe
Ioannis Ioannou – Associate Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship – London Business School
John Coley – Head of Risk Consulting Practice for EMEA – Norton Rose Fulbright
Nazim Osmancik – Chief Risk Officer, Energy Trading - Centrica
Moderated by Dana Hanby – Managing Director – ESG Nexus