Success sews the seeds of its own demise. Adversity improves the breed. Human beings are dynamic and adaptive, which means they adapt to hardship by growing stronger, becoming more resilient and more resourceful, and they react to comfort by growing lazy, complacent and vulnerable. A society which has won success and comfort through toil, enterprise

Hedge funds and their prime brokers should get more creative with their business development. One area is illiquid side pockets which can be used to house either illiquid assets or long gestation strategies. These strategies should ideally not be in the main liquid structure of the hedge fund but carved out as a side pocket.

It is important to correctly define what is meant by private banking, especially in the context of Asia. Many private banks in Asia struggle despite asset growth because of margin and cost pressures. One reason for margin compression is the failure to distinguish between private banking, brokerage and lending businesses. A typical private bank may

The Fed has form. When it wants to take away the punchbowl, it usually telegraphs its intentions well in advance so partygoers have time to go buy their own moonshine. So it was with QE taper, signaled in 2013, executed in 2014. By the time the Fed stopped net purchases of bonds the market had

A number of themes frame the global economic and financial outlook. The world has been operating monetary and fiscal policy towards sustaining growth at a higher level than the unobserved long term trend rate. It may be doing this for a number of reasons. For one, it can’t observe the long term trend rate and