ABSTRACT
The place of asset managers or management companies in the market-finance chain is that of supplier to asset owners, be they private clients or institutional investors (corporations, local authorities, governments, pension funds, etc.). Asset owners of whatever type rarely directly manage their own money, generally delegating this task to a specialist, the asset manager. Their main corporate purpose is therefore to manage these financial assets for external clients. This accounts for the particular care given to factoring in and honouring the contractual direction and constraints indicated by the client. This relationship can be a fiduciary responsibility (i.e. in its narrow sense), factoring in the interests of the asset owner as though the manager were its legal agent, with duties of loyalty and care to the client. Conventionally, asset managers have seen their role with their clients as optimizing the risk/yield curve of their assets (‘the risk-adjusted financial returns’) by safeguarding and increasing the financial value of the assets entrusted to them.
