Alternative Investors See Activism as Value Driver

 Institutional investors view activism as a successful tool used among hedge fund managers to increase returns and stimulate growth in their investments, according to a new survey conducted by Novus at the PartnerConnect/HedgeWorld East Conference in New York City.

“With institutional investors under increasing pressure to add value and deliver returns, we’re not surprised to see unconventional investment strategies like activism growing in popularity and a great uptick in allocators willing to employ them,” said Basil Qunibi, CEO and Founder of Novus, a portfolio intelligence and analytics company based in New York.

The survey found:

– The majority of experts (78%) believe activism drives shareholder value
– Nearly all respondents (94%) anticipate activism will grow in popularity
– Just under three-quarters (70%) said they would be willing to personally invest in funds that employ this strategy
– Respondents widely agree (77%) that hedge funds will be negatively impacted when their founders step back or retire 
– 88% of experts believe the industry will continue to institutionalise
– Nearly two-thirds of experts (61 percent) said post-financial crisis, pensions are under extreme pressure to generate greater returns as opposed to focusing on preserving existing capital

“Today’s institutional investors face an uphill battle when it comes to managing their liabilities, placing enormous pressure on both managers and allocators to increase alpha,” continued Qunibi. “At Novus, we believe that diving into existing portfolios to analyse them in an objective way and making sense of disparate data from various sources is the best way to unlock value and reveal hidden opportunities for any investor. In doing so, we’ve helped our clients gain significant additional alpha in comparison to their peers.”

The survey of 65 alternative and institutional investing professionals was conducted by Novus Partners at the HedgeWorld/PartnerConnect East Conference in New York City. Respondents included managers of and investors in the alternative asset management industry, including hedge funds, private equity firms, managers of family offices, pension funds and other institutional investing professionals.

Novus is a next-generation, web-based portfolio analytics and intelligence platform for institutional investors. The Novus Platform is used by many of the top hedge funds, fund of funds, pensions, sovereign wealth funds and endowments to analyze risk, performance and attribution across aggregated and historical data sets.

Portfolio managers, investor relations teams and operations teams use the Novus Platform in different ways to generate more alpha, analyse and manage their risks, report to their investors and become more efficient with resources.

Through the firm’s data-driven approach, industry-leading analytics and unique team of ex-portfolio managers and investors, Novus is transforming the way the world invests.