MiFID II leaving European managers behind U.S. peers?
By Charles McCrath
May 14, 2020, Pensions&Investments
It’s possible. Research from Evercore ISI shows European managers lagging U.S. managers in nearly every major equity fund category, pointing to research spending as the chief differentiator. U.S. managers outperformed in 13 of 16 active equity focuses in 2019, by an average 3.2%. Asia ex-Japan strategies were the only category in which Europeans beat their U.S. counterparts.
While explicitly identifying how a manager pays for its research as the culprit of comparative over/under performance, Evercore’s data covered more than 8,000 managers and showed significant gaps in spending. U.S. managers spent an estimated $6.2 billion of client money on research in 2019, but outperformed by 265 basis points, equivalent to $245 billion.
