俄罗斯’s Top Asset Managers Face a Long Bear Market

For Russianasset managers, even good news comes with a gray lining these days. Consider the 50 billion rubles ($758 million) the government abruptly transferred to nonstate pension funds in April. That should have provided a boost to a money management industry struggling with a recession, a moribund stock market, double-digit inflation, flight by foreign investors and the Russian public’s aversion to stocks.

The market’s joy was diluted by two factors. First, the Finance Ministry explained that the money was recompense for funds withheld in 2013, when a moratorium on privatepension贡献生效。但官员没有关于是否将永久恢复私人捐款的指导。基金经理，基金经理说，在封闭的门后面仍然有利于振动私人养老金制度和保守派的私人养老金制度和保守派。

其次，即使俄罗斯中央条例方案方面要求这一点，仍然可以通过有竞争力的任务对第三方管理者提供50亿卢布的赏金。

俄罗斯最大的国有银行和公司也主导资产管理。无处不在Sberbank’s asset management arm jumps from seventh place to first in this year’s Russia 20,亚博赞助欧冠排名国家最大的资产管理人员。这是唯一以美元兑换的公司;在聚集体中，前20个缩小了22％。国家竞争对手VTB资本投资管理下降到2.下一步区域集团，Kapital资产管理集团和Transfingroup资产管理，分别与国家石油巨头Rosneft，私有化油卢基诺和国有俄罗斯铁路密切相关。

Transparency and competition are making limited headway against this powerful oligopoly, outsiders complain. “Our real competition is different in-house projects and schemes in real estate and other nonmarket instruments,” says Vladimir Tsuprov, chief investment officer for TKB BNP Paribas Investment Partners, which drops from fifth to eighth place this year. Tsuprov’s employer’s name became a misnomer this summer when the outfit was acquired by a previously obscure Russian entity called Alor Group.BNP Paribas.拒绝提供交易的详细信息。它的出口使伦敦的繁荣资本管理成为俄罗斯唯一一个迎合外国投资者的唯一成员。

Another tarnished bright spot for Russian asset managers has been the localbond market, which has offered impressive nominal returns while avoiding the massive defaults many feared when the West imposed a lending boycott last year to protest Russia’s support for separatists in Ukraine. Corporate bonds rated triple-B or better offer yields in the 12 percent range, and managers straying into junk territory can earn 14 percent, says Aylin Suntay, a Turkish financier who heads No. 7 Gazprombank Asset Management, an arm of the house bank of Russia’s state-owned gas giant. But these gains struggle to keep up with inflation, which hit 15.8 percent in August.

俄罗斯’s weak domesticcapital markethas been buttressed in the past by foreign investors, who historically have owned most of the free float in equities. The prospects of rescue from abroad look faint at this point, though. Russian stocks have rebounded a bit this year, rising 19 percent in ruble terms and 8 percent in dollars. But that is hardly enough to attract major inflows against a background of weak emerging markets, oil languishing near seven-year lows, a shrinking Russian economy and continued sanctions over Moscow’s perceived aggression in Ukraine. “Russia is very, very thinly owned by investors right now,” says Mattias Westman, a founding partner at Prosperity.

今年早些时候，穆迪的投资者服务和标准和穷人的降级俄罗斯主权信用评级由于政府支出狂欢，渴望缓解经济衰退和制裁的影响;降级迫使许多国际投资者剥夺该国的债券。普通俄罗斯人面临着自2011年以来一直横向走向的股票市场，而存款的利率仍然很高，正在有效地抵制市场。“互助基金业务基本上已经死亡，”VTB资本首席执行官Vladimir Potapov说。

One straw asset managers are grasping at is the so-called de-offshorization law signed by President Vladimir Putin last November, which makes it more difficult for Russian corporations and individuals to domicile their wealth in low-tax havens like Cyprus or Luxembourg. The statute has been backed up by informal persuasion targeted at Russia’s ultrarich, with results that are hard to quantify but real, money people say.俄罗斯as a nation continues to suffer from capital flight that totaled $52 billion in the first half of this year, compared with a record $140 billion for all of 2014. But high-net-worth individuals who want to stay in business under Putin’s watchful eye are funneling more activity through domestic institutions, or so it seems. “There are people I know who have been investing Russians’ money for 20 years out of London,” Gazprombank’s Suntay says. “Now they are thinking of moving to Moscow. That’s chasing opportunities.”

最近的电话采访发现了VTB Capital的Potapov追逐莫斯科的机会，在北京，国有企业正试图复制普京加强与中国关系的政策，以抵消西方的恶化关系。“中国人对我们市场的欧洲人更感兴趣，都是固定收益和股权，”他说。证明仍有待观察。