Active Fund Management Isn’t Dead Just Yet: Chris Hughes

It’s quite easy to do bad deals in asset management. Option one, overpay for a private capital business in the aggressive dash for growth. Option two, defensively merge your existing fund manager with a regional peer and botch the integration as you try to make savings. Against that backdrop, Nomura Holdings Inc.’s decision to acquire a cheap US public-markets manager with minimal overlap stands as an oddity. Maybe there’s some logic in buying what everyone else is trying to sell.

The investment industry’s well-known problem is that active fund management is trapped between low-fee passive funds and high-charging alternative strategies promising ...