For the second year, Institutional Investor asked publicly traded companies which asset managers are their best shareholders. The very top of the rankings didn’t change much but there were some new additions further down the list.
Asset managers have been formalizing and improving their engagement with the companies they own — or want to own— over the past 15 years, since the global financial crisis. Covid-19 tested how proficient managers had become by forcing everyone to communicate remotely — which they did successfully.
Now, videoconferencing has become a norm but corporate asset managers’ access teams say there is still a lot of value in portfolio managers and analysts meeting in-person with corporate leaders. Asset managers are also building tools and continually trying to think of ways to better those consequential lines of communication.
The buy-side rankings are based on U.S. corporate (IRO) input collected in our Corporate Insights survey. In this survey, we asked investor relations officers to identify best asset management firms across the following attributes:
- Transparency on their Investment Approach
- Knowledge of Your Sector
- Active & Consistent Engagement
- Ongoing Feedback
- Efficient Engagement Across Funds
Results were aggregated to produce overall and category level results.