“The plus side is that by being an Asian specialist and being bottom-up, when we talk about the macro we can be a lot more open about the flaws that we see. What it allows us to do, and what we do particularly in the US, is to add a little bit more nuance to the conversation. I think that adds value to clients. At least I hope it does.”
Looking ahead, Mr Horrocks notes that economic growth in the region seems strong, with the difficulty being that corporate earnings have not kept up with that growth.
“What we’ve seen in Asia in the past five years is a divergence between the underlying economic growth, which has been good, and corporate earnings growth, which has been non-existent. I suspect they’ll start to move much more in tandem in the years ahead,” he says.
“It looks more optimistic than it has done for a while. The caveat is valuations, which may look expensive in the global context, but while they’re not outright cheap, they’re reasonable. And of course you want to see that the general global economy can continue to tick along. Asia as a region is still going to feel the impact of any slowdown in the global economy.”
Looking ahead for the business, Mr Horrocks says the focus continues to be reaching new clients. “When we had this plan of diversification, the way we phrased it was if we don’t add a single new dollar of clients’ assets under management, but we diversify clients by type and geography, then we’ve added value to the company.”
In terms of new funds, he says “never say never”, but adds: “There’s nothing in particular we need to do. We have a range of strategies with one underlying philosophy, which is long-term, bottom-up investment in quality growth companies. We then split that out into essentially those we invest for higher rates of growth and those that pay out dividends to give a slightly less volatile portfolio.”
He continues: “We do that in single countries: small cap and all cap. There’s no reason to launch more products or new strategies at this point.”
CV
Robert Horrocks
2008 – Present
Head of research, Matthews Asia.Named CIO in 2009
2006 – 2008
Head of research, Mirae Asset Management, Hong Kong
2003 – 2006
CIO, Everbright Pramerica, China
1998 – 2003
Taiwan country general manager – deputy CIO in Korea and designated CIO in Shanghai – Schroders
1995 – 1998
Analyst, Schroders
1994 – 1995
Research analyst, WI Carr Securities, Hong Kong
