27 March 2012

Man Group launches managed accounts system, Clarus, to give investors greater portfolio transparency

Man Group plc. (‘Man’), the alternative investment manager, has launched Clarus, an online portal for investors in managed accounts to obtain greater transparency in their underlying investments.

The financial crisis and subsequent shocks in markets have emphasised the need for visibility of the risks and liquidity in portfolios.

Man has developed Clarus to share investment insights with clients and provide more data and analysis than historical performance-based reporting. It allows clients to visualise their exposure to underlying risk factors in both their managed accounts and aggregated as part of their wider portfolio.

Eric Burl, Man’s Head of Managed Accounts, said, “Over recent years investors’ demands have shifted dramatically and people now want to see how assets are controlled, that there is good liquidity, and that their cash will be returned when they want it. Clarus provides the heightened transparency our investors seek.”

Key managed account and portfolio information that can be visualised by clients using Clarus includes performance and performance decomposition, style attribution and performance, and value-at-risk, broken down into foreign exchange sensitivities, commodity sensitivities, equity sensitivities and interest rate sensitivities.

Man currently manages $8.0 billion of assets within managed accounts. In March 2011, Man announced a managed account mandate for an initial EUR 1.2 billion from Bayerische Versorgungskammer (‘BVK’), Germany’s largest public pension fund with more than EUR 50 billion in assets. In 2010 it announced a managed account mandate for up to $1 billion by the Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited (‘USS’), the UK’s second largest private sector pension fund.

No comments: