CEO Sessions: Client conversations and brighter future investing
Join Ali Dibadj, CEO, and Michael Schweitzer, Head of North America Client Group, as they explore how Janus Henderson is helping navigate geopolitical uncertainty, broadening offerings to clients, and fostering partnerships for a brighter future.
1 minute watch
Key takeaways:
- Understanding and meeting client needs is central to Janus Henderson’s values of “clients come first always” and “truth builds trust”. This helps forge strong partnerships as we invest together with clients.
- Geopolitical realignment has long been one of our key three macro drivers. Janus Henderson’s 350 investment professionals actively analyse and address the challenges on behalf of clients.
- To meet client needs as they evolve, the firm is expanding its presence globally by leveraging successful strategies from North America, including its strong ETF suite, and developing new partnerships, such as with life insurer Guardian.
Active investing: An investment management approach where a fund manager actively aims to outperform or beat a specific index or benchmark through research, analysis and the investment choices they make. The opposite of Passive Investing.
Bond: A debt security issued by a company or a government, used as a way of raising money. The investor buying the bond is effectively lending money to the issuer of the bond. Bonds offer a return to investors in the form of fixed periodic payments (a ‘coupon’), and the eventual return at maturity of the original amount invested – the par value. Because of their fixed periodic interest payments, they are also often called fixed income instruments.
Exchange traded fund (ETF): A security that tracks an index, sector, commodity or pool of assets (such as an index fund). ETFs trade like an equity on a stock exchange and experience price changes as the underlying assets move up and down in price. ETFs typically have higher daily liquidity and lower fees than actively managed funds.
Equity: A security representing ownership, typically listed on a stock exchange. ‘Equities’ as an asset class means investments in shares, as opposed to, for instance, bonds. To have ‘equity’ in a company means to hold shares in that company and therefore have part ownership.
Passive investing: An investment approach that involves tracking a particular market or index. It is called passive because it seeks to mirror an index, either fully or partially replicating it, rather than actively picking or choosing stocks to hold. The primary benefit of passive investing is exposure to a particular market with generally lower fees than you might find on an actively managed fund. The opposite of active investing.
Private credit: An asset defined by non-bank lending where the debt is not issued or traded on the public markets.
Private equity: An investment in a company that is not listed on a stock exchange. Like infrastructure investing, it tends to involve investors committing large amounts of money for long periods of time.
Securitised assets: Securitisation is the process in which certain types of assets are pooled so that they can be repackaged into interest-bearing securities, together which constitutes a market for buying or selling.
Ali Dibadj: Everyone, thanks for joining us today for the latest episode of CEO Sessions. For these sessions, I usually sit here and pass questions to our investment professionals and other folks at Janus Henderson. But today the tables are turned a little bit. I’m delighted to be joined by Michael Schweitzer, our Head of North America Client Group, for conversation on what we’re hearing from clients around the world.
Michael, thanks for coming today.
Michael Schweitzer: Well, thanks for having me on, Ali. If we start with our purpose of investing in a brighter future together at Janus Henderson, how does that shape your activities as CEO and how you interact with clients on a regular basis?
Dibadj: Well, our purpose is such an important part of who we are and supporting those are our set of five values. Two of those values are very, very key. Clients come first, always, and truth builds trust. For me, that means getting out and meeting clients every day as much as I can to understand what their needs are, and their clients’ needs are so that we can bring that back and as a whole firm try to deliver on that.
Schweitzer: So, Ali, to build on that, can you give us some examples of what that’s meant in terms of the conversations you’ve had this year?
Dibadj: As you’d imagine, one of the biggest concerns right now is just the uncertainty from a geopolitical perspective. Now, the good news is at Janus Henderson, one of the big three themes that we’ve identified many years ago, actually, one of them is geopolitical uncertainty and geopolitical realignment. So, we’ve been thinking about that for quite some time. I’m not sure we would have said it happened so quickly in quite this manner, but we knew there’s going to be changes from the geopolitical front. So, our 350 investors from around the world have been focused on this for a very, very long time and thinking through how they can serve that end client much better.
Schweitzer: Can you give us some examples of broader conversations that you’ve had that are on the minds of our clients in general?
Dibadj: Of course, Michael. One of the most important things that we’ve learned from our clients is that their needs are broadening. They really need Janus Henderson to support them in many, many different ways. And we’re quite fortunate to be able to have that broad context. Our clients who may know us for US equities may not know that we have global equities around the world. May not know we have fixed income, may not know that we have publics and privates all around the world. So really being able to bring the broader scope of the firm to meet the needs of an ever-changing client is something that we certainly have found a lot of exciting interactions with and discussions with.
Part and parcel to that is not just individually bringing those products and bringing those investment skill sets to the firms that we that we have as clients, but also to bring the whole firm to that client as a partner. So, it brings solutions, for example, whether they be multi-asset solutions, whether they be adaptive solutions or other things.
Bringing our expertise across all of the ingredients that we have to deliver on that client in one full package is becoming much more important and interesting for us to be able to deliver on that. You know, a great example that is actually the partnership that we forged with Guardian, one of the most sophisticated largest life insurance companies, in employee benefits plans in the world.
We’re very fortunate to forge that partnership. Not only does it bring on board US$45 billion of assets of the most sophisticated and most experienced investors in the world and insurance, but also it ties us together with this firm to deliver growth for them. And that’s the type of conversation we’re having more and more with other clients as well who want to partake in our growth and deliver for them and their clients as well as their own growth.
Schweitzer: So, there’s a lot of interest in our equity research platform in North America, in particular, our investment in Privacore is, creating a lot of excitement on the US product side. I know that we have a very strong ETF suite, which we’re expanding into the active equity side to build on our success and expertise in the securitised space.
I also know there’s a lot going on globally as well.
Dibadj: There is a lot of going on globally where we’re taking a lot of what you’ve developed in North America. Michael, you and your team, whether it be privates in the asset backed side of things, bringing that to Europe and bringing that to Asia, in the Middle East as well.
Certainly, on the ETF side, which North America is very well versed in, and we’re expanding that globally, partly with the acquisition of Tabula. People may not know this, but in the world we’re number three in active fixed income ETFs, we’re number eight in all active ETFs. And that’s, again, something we’re trying to build on and globalize every day of the week.
Schweitzer: So, there are a lot of positive things going on at Janus Henderson right now. At the same time, the world’s quite challenged. Based on that, what do you think is keeping clients up at night? And importantly, how can Janus Henderson help?
Dibadj: I think the biggest thing that’s keeping clients up at night is it’s just not as easy to invest anymore in a world where there is no cost of capital, where the markets are all very, very unidirectional and are always going up.
It’s actually pretty easy to put your money away, and that’s something that’s private equity and levered or a passive index or something like that and just sit back. This is not that environment anymore, to your point. This is a much more complex environment. There actually is a cost of capital. Money is not free.
So, a good company and a bad company will perform completely differently. That’s what we do at Janus Henderson, very much to your question. We have 350 people across the world who are investors who think through separating wheat from chaff to deliver better returns for our clients. Either only buying the wheat or also shorting the chaff along the way.
Schweitzer: Thanks, Ali. I think that’s probably a pretty good place to wrap up, given that it illustrates the importance of the together part of our purpose.
Dibadj: Thanks, Michael. Thanks for asking all these questions. I really appreciate you being here and serving our clients the way you and your team do. And thank you all for joining.
Michael’s right. Our purpose is investing in a brighter future together, that partnership with you as our clients, and together, which is symbolised by this ampersand here. That’s really what we envision here. Janus Henderson, working with you. Working for you. If there’s anything Michael or I can do to help, please reach out. Let us know. Thank you for joining.
Thank you.
These are the views of the author at the time of publication and may differ from the views of other individuals/teams at Janus Henderson Investors. References made to individual securities do not constitute a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, investment strategy or market sector, and should not be assumed to be profitable. Janus Henderson Investors, its affiliated advisor, or its employees, may have a position in the securities mentioned.
Past performance does not predict future returns. The value of an investment and the income from it can fall as well as rise and you may not get back the amount originally invested.
The information in this article does not qualify as an investment recommendation.
There is no guarantee that past trends will continue, or forecasts will be realised.
Marketing Communication.
1 minute watch
Key takeaways:
- Understanding and meeting client needs is central to Janus Henderson’s values of “clients come first always” and “truth builds trust”. This helps forge strong partnerships as we invest together with clients.
- Geopolitical realignment has long been one of our key three macro drivers. Janus Henderson’s 350 investment professionals actively analyse and address the challenges on behalf of clients.
- To meet client needs as they evolve, the firm is expanding its presence globally by leveraging successful strategies from North America, including its strong ETF suite, and developing new partnerships, such as with life insurer Guardian.