Tema: PPCC-Pisitófilos Creditófagos-Invierno 2022

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/ddb4c8c8-f6d9-4b35-b349-1ad8ab4a172c

US fund managers turn away from China and look to Europe for growth

American groups are embarking on a hiring spree as they look to expand their operations in the region

Top US investment management firms are going on a hiring spree in Europe as draconian anti-Covid measures and rising geopolitical tensions have pushed them to redouble their search for growth outside China.

Major American firms — such as Capital Group, JPMorgan Asset Management, T Rowe Price and BlackRock — are planning to expand longstanding offices in Europe as they hunt for growth outside their home market.

China may be reopening but its fierce anti-Covid measures, the EU’s push into sustainable investing and worries over tensions between Beijing and Washington had all favoured doubling down on Europe, said Jonathan Doolan, partner at consultancy Indefi.

“That 1-2-3 punch . . . meant that a lot of firms that had a global footprint are starting to re-examine Europe as a core area for them to succeed,” Doolan said.

“Europe remains an attractive market . . . it is the largest institutional and wholesale market outside of the US. It also has a strong responsible investment focus, supported by the regulatory regime,” said Saker Nusseibeh, chief executive of Federated Hermes, the London-based affiliate of the American firm, which has $624bn under management.

Bigger American firms, which often have established offices in London and distribution networks on the continent, are being selective in their push further into Europe.

Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the UK and Nordic countries are particular targets, as is the region’s growing wealth market, say people familiar with the matter.

While regional competitors with deep roots offer specialised local products, US firms think they have an edge because of their ability to sell access to global strategies.

Until recently, big US firms looking to expand simply paid up — BlackRock bought Barclays’ investment arm BGI for $13.5bn in 2009 and Goldman Sachs Asset Management acquired Netherlands-based NN Investments in 2021.

Now, however, “there’s an acknowledgment that a lot of it is going to need to be done organically or with small acquisitions”, Doolan said.

In order to bulk up, PGIM in December announced two senior hires in London, including a new role for a London-based global head of distribution.

Retail giant T Rowe Price, which has $1.23tn under management, has grown its European operation from about 300 people in 2012 to more than 1,000 now.

Capital, which has $2.2tn under management, has almost doubled its European staff in the past decade from 430 to 750 and will double its space in London when it moves to a new office from next year.

Pimco also announced it would open its first office in France this month.

Senior executives at Capital Group and T Rowe said that while they were keen to invest in Europe they had never invested heavily in building onshore businesses in China.

“What we do in the US is we distribute mutual funds to ordinary investors through financial intermediaries, that’s the bedrock of the business. So the fact that we didn’t do it outside the US always looked a bit odd,” said Hamish Forsyth, president for Europe and Asia at Capital Group, which first started building a business outside the US about a decade ago.

Robert Higginbotham, head of global distribution at T Rowe Price, said the firm was hiring client-facing roles first in Europe and that Germany and Spain had been particularly profitable markets.

“We’re realistic — we’ve been on the ground on our own steam for 22 years but we know . . . we’re not in the top five considerations in most markets. So our plan now is really to double down on where we already exist. It’s about going deeper rather than broader,” said Higginbotham.

For JPMorgan Asset Management, sub-advisory services — where products are sold to savers via banks and other intermediaries — have driven growth in Europe, while the firm sees opportunities in alternatives and sustainable investing.

“Our European business is a core part of our business and growth strategy,” said Patrick Thomson, chief executive for Europe at JPMorgan Asset Management. Nevertheless, he said, China remained key. “We have a long-established presence in China and we’re very committed to it. If you’re a global investor you can’t ignore China, no matter what the politics are.”

The top tier of American alternatives managers, such as KKR and Apollo, which have very successful wealth management businesses, are also looking to Europe and actively hiring as they expand private assets capabilities.

“Those . . . shops are saying: we’ve already been in Europe for long enough, we know all the institutions that matter. Our next leg of the stool is going to be wealth, and we are not going to be encumbered by euros or dollars or pounds in terms of how much we can hire. We’re going to throw bodies at the problem until it solves itself,” Doolan said.

[sudden and sharp]

No hablábamos de burbujas sino de adanismo.

Y no hablábamos de circunstancias dantescas como las que llevaron a revoluciones sangrientas, Francia, la Rusia zarista... Sino de cuando después de años gloriosos... simplemente se frenó el crecimiento... y algunos decidieron jugárselo todo al "No pasa". (Desdeñando el conocimiento anterior... y partiendo de cero, pero con trampas. El todos capitalistas por la propiedad de vivienda estaba condenado desde el principio... Lo sabían perfectamente, o debían saberlo, véase el ejemplo del duque de Lerma, en este país donde no se enriqueció todo el mundo precisamente.)

Our opponents would have us believe that all problems can be solved by State intervention. But Governments should not run business.

Indeed, the weakness of the case for State ownership has become all too apparent. [end p22]

For state planners do not have to suffer the consequences of their mistakes. It's the taxpayers who have to pick up the bill.

This Government has rolled back the frontiers of the State, and will roll them back still further.

So popular is our policy that it's being taken up all over the world.

From France to the Phillipines, from Jamaica to Japan, from Malaysia to Mexico, from Sri Lanka to Singapore, privatisation is on the move, there's even a special oriental version in China. [end p23]

The policies we have pioneered are catching on in country after country.

We Conservatives believe in popular capitalism—believe in a property-owning democracy.

And it works!

https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106498




[ Es la tesis de pp.cc.: Unos listillos se apropiaron de una bandera concebida por la II Internacional, para llenarse los bolsillos. (Lo primero lo dice pp.cc, lo último lo digo yo; y puede que pp.cc. también.) ]

[Cadavre Exquis]

The Strange and Awful Path of Productivity in the US Construction Sector
Posted by msmash on Monday January 23, 2023 @02:20PM from the closer-look dept.

Despite aggregate productivity for the US economy having doubled over the past 50 years, the country's construction sector has diverged considerably, trending downward throughout that period. And this is no slight decrease. Raw BEA data suggest that the value added per worker in the construction sector was about 40 percent lower in 2020 than in 1970. From a report:

How can a sector like construction, with average value-added of 4.3 percent of GDP between 1950 and 2020, experience such a precipitous decline in productivity relative to the rest of the economy? To answer this question, researchers have focused on issues relating to data measurement, hypothesizing that measurement errors largely explain this phenomenon. This new research updates some of those efforts and, importantly, extends them to investigate other hypotheses to find the following:

1. Using measures of physical productivity in housing construction (i.e., number of houses or total square footage built per employee), the authors confirm that productivity is indeed falling or, at best, stagnant over multiple decades. Importantly, these facts are not explained by the incidence of price measurement problems.
2. Instead of data error, the authors investigate two other possible explanations. First, they find that the construction sector's ability to transform intermediate goods into finished products has deteriorated.
3. And second, the authors describe the curious fact that producers located in more-productive areas do not grow at expected rates. Indeed, rather than construction inputs flowing to areas where they are more productive, the activity share of these areas either stagnates or even falls. The authors suggest that this problem with allocative efficiency may accentuate the aggregate productivity problem for the industry.

Saludos.

[Derby]

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/canada-hootsuite-announces-staff-cuts-142400157.html

Canada’s Hootsuite Announces Staff Cuts And Replaces CEO

Canada’s Hootsuite has announced its third round of job cuts since last summer and replaced its chief executive officer (CEO) as the social media company continues to struggle financially.

The privately held Vancouver-based tech firm said the latest employee layoffs will impact 70 employees, or 7% of its workforce.

Last August, Hootsuite eliminated 30% of its workforce as part of a restructuring. In November, Hootsuite laid off an additional 5% of its employees.

The company has also announced that Irina Novoselsky has been appointed as its new CEO. The previous CEO, Tom Keiser, stepped down from the role.

Previously, Novoselsky served as CEO of CareerBuilder, a human resources technology company.

Hootsuite had planned an initial public offering (IPO) in 2021 but put off going public as its finances and market conditions deteriorated.

[Benzino Napaloni]

https://www.ft.com/content/298db34e-b550-4f80-a27b-a0cf7148f5f6

Microsoft confirms ‘multibillion-dollar investment’ in ChatGPT maker OpenAI

Agreement represents bet on transformative nature of artificial intelligence on company’s future business

Microsoft has confirmed a “multibillion-dollar investment” in ChatGPT bot maker OpenAI, making its biggest bet yet that artificial intelligence systems have the power to transform the tech giant’s business model and products.

Precise financial details have not been disclosed, though the company on Monday said it was investing billions of dollars in a “multiyear” agreement. People familiar with the talks previously said OpenAI was seeking $10bn from Microsoft at a $29bn valuation.

The deal comes just a few days after Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella announced plans to shed 10,000 workers — or nearly 5 per cent of its staff — in an effort to cut costs in response to the tech downturn.

However, the stake in OpenAI comes with a belief that AI represents a technology that could transform Microsoft, helping it develop new “productivity” software alongside its Office applications and even renewing its challenge for market share against Google in search.

The deal also secures Microsoft’s position as exclusive cloud computing provider to one of the world’s leading AI start-ups, in a boost to its Azure cloud business.

“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research,” said Nadella in a blog post.

“In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organisations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications,” he added. (...)

Quemando millones buscando la Piedra Filosofal en medio de los despidos en masa. No tenemos remedio.

Espero por nuestro bien que la burbuja del GPT reviente pronto. No lo digo por que no lleguen los resultados que promete (que son imposibles), sino por que el daño que hará no llegue muy lejos.

De momento ya hay alertas de que como lo intenten usar para picar código, los hackers se van a poner las botas.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1616285878082764801

Saludos.

[Derby]

https://dailyshotbrief.com/the-daily-shot-brief-january-23rd-2023/

The United States: Existing home sales were very weak in December, down 36% in 2022. This is the biggest annual decline in decades.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1616296312114225152

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1616454582392979461

https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1616462001357692929

Saludos.

[Derby]

Quemando millones buscando la Piedra Filosofal en medio de los despidos en masa. No tenemos remedio.

Espero por nuestro bien que la burbuja del GPT reviente pronto. No lo digo por que no lleguen los resultados que promete (que son imposibles), sino por que el daño que hará no llegue muy lejos.

De momento ya hay alertas de que como lo intenten usar para picar código, los hackers se van a poner las botas.

https://seths.blog/2023/01/overconfidence-and-ai/

Overconfidence and AI

Human beings are often more effective when we’re a bit self-effacing. “I think,” “Perhaps,” or “I might be missing something, but…” are fine ways to give our assertions a chance to be considered.

The solar-powered LED calculator we used in school did no such thing. 6 x 7 is 42, no ifs, ands or buts.

Part of the magic of Google search was that it was not only cocky, it was often correct. The combination of its confidence and its utility made it feel like a miracle.

Of course, Google was never completely correct. It rarely found exactly the right page every time. That was left to us. But the aura of omnipotence persisted–in fact, when Google failed, we were supposed to blame evil black-hat SEO hackers, not an imperfect algorithm and a greedy monopolist.

And now, ChatGPT shows up with fully articulated assertions about anything we ask it.

I’m not surprised that one of the biggest criticisms we’re hearing, even from insightful pundits, is that it is too confident. That it announces without qualification that biryani is part of a traditional South Indian tiffin, but it’s not.

Would it make a difference if every single response began, “I’m just a beta of a program that doesn’t actually understand anything, but human brains jump to the conclusion that I do, so take this with a grain of salt…”

In fact, that’s our job.

When a simple, convenient bit of data shows up on your computer screen, take it with a grain of salt.

Not all email is spam.

Not all offers are scams.

And not all GPT3 responses are incorrect.

But it can’t hurt to insert your own preface before you accept it as true.

Overconfidence isn’t the AI’s problem. There are lots of cultural and economic shifts that it will cause. Our gullibility is one of the things we ought to keep in mind.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://twitter.com/charliebilello/status/1617190353861312516

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.expansion.com/mercados/2023/01/24/63cf2010468aebbb538b4614.html

https://cincodias.elpais.com/cincodias/2023/01/23/mercados/1674488673_665601.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12119560/01/23/La-media-diaria-de-despidos-crece-un-45-con-la-ultima-reforma-laboral-.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/12118873/01/23/Diaz-es-partidaria-de-dirigir-la-subida-del-salario-minimo-al-tramo-alto-de-los-expertos-en-1082-euros.html

Saludos.

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://elpais.com/economia/2023-01-23/microsoft-invertira-100000-millones-en-la-empresa-de-chatgpt-para-impulsar-la-inteligencia-artificial.html

Saludos.