Two new academics join the ICMA Centre for 2016

The ICMA Centre – Henley Business School will be hosting the 2013 European Financial Management Association (EFMA) annual meeting on 26-29 June. The conference program includes 252 research papers that will be presented by authors from 36 countries and 5 continents. Among the 84 parallel sessions that will take place over the 4 days of the conference, 4 will be completely dedicated to the financial crisis, 5 on bank management and regulation, 4 on risk management and related issues and 12 on corporate governance and management compensation. Other topics that will be discussed at the meetings, which span all areas of finance, are portfolio management and asset allocation, mergers and acquisitions, real estate, commodities, behavioural finance, currency markets and exchange rates, derivative securities pricing and hedging and law, ethics and finance.

Fidelity, the asset manager with $2.4 trillion assets under management, recently announced the launch of two index mutual funds with a 0% fee! This announcement is interesting for several reasons. First, the asset management industry has been involved in an intense price war and this new fee level of 0% represents a very tough benchmark for the competition to beat. Not surprisingly, the share price of rival asset managers fell by a few percentage points shortly after the announcement. Second, the new fee level is unusual as it indicates that, for the first time, investors could get exposure to both US and international equities without incurring any fee. This is a curious business decision. How will Fidelity manage to pay for all its expenses? Will this product be a loss-making venture? Is there more to it than meets the eyes?

Sneak peek of Welcome to the ICMA Centre video, a truly international finance school