Ashmore, Morningstar, Curve, Santander Innoventures and Falcon Bank in Investments this week

by | Jul 20, 2017 | Wealth management

  • Ashmore, the London-based asset manager which specialises in emerging market debt, has posted net inflows of $1.2bn for Q2 2017. Assets under management rose 5% quarter on quarter to $58.7bn
  • Morningstar research for the FT has found that some banks and insurers are selling poor-value active investment products which produce similar returns to the indexes they are trying to beat. Investments sold by Halifax and Scottish Widows were found to have holdings that were closest to their underlying index. The findings follow the FCA estimating that about £109bn of investors’ money was in funds that charge high fees, but perform like low-cost tracking funds
  • Curve has raised $10m in a Series A funding backed by Santander InnoVentures and Investec and other venture capitalists and investors
  • Santander InnoVentures has made strategic investments in the UK start-ups Pixoneye and Curve and US-based Gridspace. Pixoneye offers predictive personalization, connected finance technology, while Gridspace offers conversational intelligence
  • Falcon Bank is to become the first private bank to offer clients access to Bitcoin and crypto assets following an agreement with Bitcoin Suisse AG. Bitcoin Suisse AG will act as the Swiss bank’s crypto-asset broker and infrastructure partner, and provide the full suite of products and services necessary to acquire, safeguard, track, and trade crypto-assets for institutional clients and high net worth clients
  • UBS Wealth Management has appointed tennis star Maria Sharapova to a new advisory board created to improve the service its offers female clients. The move is part of UBS’s five-year plan to significantly scale its expertise in serving female clients