SBI Holdings and Man Group to establish asset management JV
Man Group, a leading asset management firm offering advanced and innovative asset management strategies with a focus on hedge funds, and SBI Holdings will form a joint venture company to offer investment products that leverage Man Group’s extensive and diverse capabilities in alternative asset management, including hedge funds, primarily to retail investors in Japan.
The Man Group, established in the UK in 1783, is a leading asset management company with operations in 13 countries around the world, including Japan. As of March 31, 2023, the Man Group has approximately US$144.7 billion (approximately 20 trillion yen) under management, including alternative strategies offered through its subsidiaries, AHL, GLG, FRM, and Numeric.
The newly established joint venture asset management company will work with Man Group to develop alternative investment products that are simple and easy to understand for individual investors, and will offer them as investment products that contribute to long-term asset building, mainly to customers of SBI Securities and SBI Shinsei Bank.
In recent years, due to increasing uncertainty in the global asset management market, it has become increasingly difficult to achieve high performance by investing only in traditional assets such as stocks and bonds. Under such circumstances, the need for alternative investments, which have low correlation with traditional assets and are effective as risk diversifiers, is expected to further expand, and the balance of global alternatives under management is expected to reach $23.3 trillion (3,378 trillion yen) by the end of 2027, up 70% from the end of 2021.
The Japanese alternatives market is not yet mature and has not yet reached a level where investors can make optimal alternative investments. Among publicly offered investment trusts for individual investors, hedge funds account for only 51 funds and 485 billion yen in net asset balance, which is extremely small compared to the total number of funds.
In light of this situation, the newly established joint venture asset management company has set the goal of “democratizing alternative investments” and will combine the innovative nature of our Group’s Internet finance with the Man Group’s advanced management capabilities in alternative investment management to create a new type of asset management company that can provide alternative products that have been offered mainly to institutional investors and some high-net-worth individuals.
The newly established asset management company, in promoting efforts to reduce the minimum investment size of alternative investments and expand the base of alternative investments, will aim to open and start operations as soon as possible, subject to the completion of registration as an investment management business and investment advisory and agency business with the regulatory authorities, after appropriate evaluation and risk management systems as expected in the FSA’s Progress Report.
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