Tag Archives: BlackRock

03.16.16
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Peanuts, monkeys and why the idea of investing for the longer term is a no brainer

As part of my multi-disciplinary Master’s degree, I did one unit in the Business School about business strategy. There I sat in a lecture room full of keen-eyed, shiny business students and me, the curious arts student whose entire career has been in the private sector, a large chunk working in investment.

As with many clichés that were trotted out during that course, the one that just made my heart sink due to its sheer lack of critical thinking, was the old chestnut “if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys”. I countered that actually, sometimes if your incentive packages have large sums of money tied to short-term performance at its centre, you create the perfect environment for monkeying around. Sub-prime mortgages and the GFC anyone?

So imagine my reaction when I read last month that some of the gorillas of the investment world were holding secret summit meetings to “encourage longer-term investment and reduce friction with shareholders”. The Financial Times’ supplement FTfm reported that meetings were held with Warren Buffet, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase Jamie Dimon and the heads of heavyweight investment houses Fidelity, Vanguard, BlackRock and Capital Group.

The investment industry were obviously concerned that they were not aligned with the requirements of listed companies looking to grow their business; or their actual end-customers, you and me, who invest for long-term wealth development. At the top of the companies’ complaint list was the institutional shareholders focus on short-term returns, compared to long-term growth goals of companies.

The problem is that the investment industry markets its short-term performance to get more of the real capital owners, you and me, in the door and boost their funds under management. It then also creates incentives for its investment staff based on their short-term performance. They are not all like that, the best active fund managers do take long-term views and engage with companies and their trading volumes tend to be less. But many others churn through trades in passive or shadow-passive funds just trying to replicate an index to make their performance targets, which are very often tied to their performance versus the index. It would be more useful for the investment industry to tie incentives to longer term performance, in line with us, the customers, many of whom are saving over the long-term for retirement.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia estimates there is $AUD2 trillion invested in superannuation, of which $AU317 billion is invested in Australian equities with a further $AU183 in Australian fixed interest. Australia is the fourth largest superannuation market in the world, behind the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom.

The United States had an estimated $US23.5 trillion in retirement savings as at 30 September 2015, according to the Investment Company Institute inside a variety of retirement savings vehicles. This does not include other investment savings, just the money in vehicles designed for long-term investing. According to Goldman Sachs, 69% of the US stock market is owned by US households, mutual funds and government and pension funds. The remaining 31% is made up of predominantly international investors (16%) with the much-talked-about hedge funds holding only 4%.

The British Investment Association stated that 38% of the £5.5 trillion of funds under management are British pension funds in 2013. According to Towers Watson, the Japanese pensions funds had $US2.8 trillion under management.

That is a lot of people looking for long-term investments to give them financial security at retirement. Surely the stewards of their money should align their activities with their end-customers.

09.18.13
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Fat profits from empty calories

Is a rapid rise in obesity levels in poor countries an acceptable side effect of multi-national companies and their investors pushing hard into these markets to create new profits?

In June this year, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said the increasing number of people in low and middle income countries being overweight and obese was creating major long-term public health problems. WHO identified that more than 75% of the world’s overweight children lived in those countries that also suffered issues associated with under-nutrition.

One of the key problems was the rising availability of cheap, highly calorific, or energy dense, foods and drinks that had little nutritional value. Driving this increase of consumption was intensive marketing, by multinational food and drink companies, particularly to children, according to another WHO study. Marketing about unprocessed foods in these countries did not exist.

There is so much money to be made in these low and middle income countries from selling soft drinks and the junk food that companies are targeting these markets as their future. Indeed, Coca Cola was very excited about the profit-making potential of the poor. In a presentation to a Barclays Capital conference in September this year, Coca Cola’s  senior executive Ahmet Bozer talked about ‘seizing the moment’ in sub-Saharan Africa with their ‘sparkling drinks’ (read the calorific Coke and the like) leading their charge into the market.

Bozer identified that there was a target consumer base of 6.1 billion people in Coca Cola’s International business and 37% of these were under 21. A core strategy was to drive sales growth through the flagship ‘sparkling’ market. Coca Cola was in the market for young drinkers to become loyal buyers of their product throughout their life, not as an occasional treat drink but as an everyday choice.

Some of the biggest American institutional investors in the world have major stake in Coca Cola. As at 30 June 2013, Berkshire Hathaway held 9% of the company, followed by Vanguard at 4.8%, State Street at 3.8%, Fidelity at 3.4% and BlackRock at 2.6%. Vanguard, State Street and BlackRock also have large stakes in PepsiCo.

Imagine if these institutional giants, who manage the money of the citizens of the US and others, actually told Coca Cola to revise their strategy.

What would happen if these investors told Coca Cola they would not sell their stock if Coca Cola took responsibility for the impact of their products on the health of their consumers (many of them without the benefit of the same level of health education as those of us in high income countries)? What would happen if Coca Cola focused on pushing their bottled water and healthier choice drinks into these markets instead? What impact would that have on this impending major health issue?

It doesn’t mean Coca Cola can’t make money, but rather make money out of products that don’t leave a trail of long-term health issues for its customers, the very people that will keep the company in business.

It doesn’t mean that investors can’t make returns on their investment in Coca Cola, but if nothing changes, what it does mean is that we, as the people that ultimately provide the money for institutional investors, value wealth over our health and the health of others less fortunate than us.

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