The current management team at Prosper continues to provide us with pleasant surprises. Today, they announced they have closed an...
BlackRock's investment in the Funding Circle SME Income Fund has increased to 15%; meanwhile Aberdeen's ownership has also increased to a substantial share; investments from the institutional managers show the success of the Fund and the confidence in its management; Sachin Patel is the Fund's lead portfolio manager and the Funding Circle SME Income Fund has grown to assets under management of approximately GBP300 million ($383.5 million) following a recent C-Share issuance. Source
BlackRock, the world’s largest investment group, is setting up an AI research lab; the move is part of a wider industry trend by asset managers to use AI and machine learning for investments; the lab is meant to help their current teams and clients better understand how best to utilize the new technologies; “Big data offers a world of possibilities for generating alpha [market beating returns] but traditional techniques are not good enough to analyse the huge volumes of information involved,” said David Wright, head of product strategy in Europe for BlackRock’s scientific active equity division, to the FT. Source.
A new survey by BlackRock of more than 200 institutional investors shows that only a quarter say technology is as important...
UK based payments fintech TransferWise has upped their valuation to $3.5bn with a secondary funding raise of $292mn; the round...
BlackRock's new investment management executive Mark Wiseman has reorganized the business with a greater focus on automated investing for its active funds; the changes will focus on the actively-managed equities business and include pricing changes and increased use of computer models for active investment funds; the firm's passive investments have helped it grow assets under management to $5.1 trillion however its active fund performance has lagged and in 2016 reported $275.1 billion invested, a decrease from $317.3 billion three years prior. Source
Through the partnership, the firm hopes to provide more personalization to their over 270,000 users; both portfolios were vetted by Betterment to ensure quality and affordability standards; Dan Egan, director of behavioral finance investments at Betterment stated, “We wanted to get these strategies out to our clients as quickly as possible, rather than build them out ourselves.” Source
BlackRock is leading a $50mn investment round into microinvesting app Acorns to help build out their investment options; BlackRock joins...
BlackRock founded AI Labs last year to begin researching artificial intelligence for potential product offerings; the team is now comprised...
Asset management divisions within big banks have always been a solid revenue source but recently they have taken on greater...