March 1991 – In the cover story, “Money Management’s Brave New World,” Institutional Investor Contributing Editor Julie Rohrer wrote something that rings as true today as it did then: Asset growth, having tripled in the previous decade, was slowing.
“Clients are tougher,” noted Rohrer, “and new markets are harder to crack.” Then she posed a question: Is there still money to be made? Her answer was a conditional yes. Money management boutiques would become “endangered species,” but large, multiproduct — if not multinational — organizations with diversified distribution channels” would prosper.
Rohrer was right, of course, and that trend continues, but on a far grander scale. At the time of the story, J.P. Morgan Investment Management managed $63 billion; today the renamed J.P. Morgan Asset Management manages $1.3 trillion. A wave of consolidation is creating asset mangement behemoths of a once-unimaginable size. BlackRock’s acquisition of Barclays Global Investors in June created a firm with assets of $2.7 trillion. Now the question is: Is there still money to be made on that scale?
