Picture a caricature of a hulking behemoth pitted against a small, nimble opponent, writes Johann Barnard. The storyline is always that the combatant able to move more swiftly has the upper hand. Overlay this picture onto the asset management business and the behemoth is the traditional, establishment manager; the smaller, nimbler character is the boutique asset manager. The analogy fails to some extent because boutiques may be smaller as individual firms, but jointly they manage around R2.4trillion of SA’s R5.2trillion assets under management. These figures are lifted from a study published late last year by RMI Investment Managers. In the study, the market is split between the bank and insurance-owned asset managers and the independent and true boutique managers. So, the terms independent or boutique are not synonyms for "small". The report found that SA has 126 of these managers, but the top 10 manage 76% of this R2.4 trillion pot. This figure is swayed somewhat by stalwarts such...
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