2009 brought a revival of mutual funds, which, by tripling theirvolume of assets to the record threshold of over 3bn RON (720meuros) and doubling the number of investors, have regained thereputation and visibility they had lost in the wake of late '90sbankruptcies.
The mutual fund market is poised to end its best year on record,with net assets of above 3bn RON (720m euros) from over 160,000investors. Compared with late 2008, when market assets stood at940m RON (235m euros) from almost 91,000 investors, the leap ishuge, beyond the most upbeat expectations of market players.
Even so, the number of investors in mutual funds has not reached,yet, the record high level of 1999. "(...) The presence ofinternationally renowned financial-banking groups in the assetmanagement industry was decisive in its regaining its credibility,"said Drago[ Neac[u, chairman of Erste Asset Management, the biggestfund manager with assets under management worth above 1.4bn RON(330m euros).
The leap mutual funds have taken this year is the more important asit occurred after the unprecedented corrections the capital marketregistered in 2008. Moreover, funds' performance was registered ina hostile context marked by the first year of economic downturnafter a decade of uninterrupted growth, but also by the highvolatility of the Stock Exchange.
The winners were primarily managers that are part offinancial-banking groups. Thus, owing to the banking sales network,funds with a conservative risk profile posted an unprecedentedasset growth, of as much as 380%, in the first 11 months of 2009.Banking managers came to control over 90% in the industry'sassets.
For independent managers, 2009 did not bring major changes fromprevious years in terms of assets and number of investors.
The most vulnerable to the crisis were "young" managers, launchedlast summer. In other situations, managers gave up products. Therewere, however, managers that saw the crisis as an opportunity andadded new products to their portfolios.
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