2011 Media Releases

Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management business brought together its most senior investors and analysts at the “Around the World with Deutsche Asset Management” conference to provide Australian clients with insights into some of the key issues facing global investors today.

At the conference, Stephen O’Brien, CEO Deutsche Asset Management (Australia) announced plans to launch an ESG credit strategy for wholesale clients in Australia.  “Proven over several years in Europe, this strategy includes additional means of capturing alpha with the potential for reduced overall risk. This is an attractive proposition when we are living in an environment where sovereigns can no longer offer the security needed from this traditional 'anchor' in a well diversified portfolio. Deutsche has clear differentiated experience in the ESG space and will be looking to offer wholesale investors in Australia a credit strategy in the coming months.”

Opening the conference, Roelfien Kuijpers, Global Head of DB Advisors put it best when she said, “The challenges we face as investors and asset managers are essentially global in nature. No matter where one is located, the best response to these challenges is almost always one that is informed by an understanding of global dynamics.”

The macro-economic stage was set by Deutsche Bank Australia’s Chief Economist Adam Boyton who reviewed the possibility of a US or global recession and the potential impact on Australia and monetary policy.

The agenda for the day covered the broad spectrum of investment strategies, from fixed income to equities, property to infrastructure and private equity. Investment themes were also discussed on topics ranging from clean tech investing to Asian equities.

In discussing the fixed income environment Georg Schuh, Head of Fixed Income Europe  provided an update the U.S. and European sovereign debt situation, and took a deep dive into the structural challenges and likely outcomes facing the Eurozone.  Christoph Klein, Head of European Non Financial Credit and Chris Siniakov, Head of Fixed Income Asia Pacific also shared their views on how they saw the recent ratings downgrades as an opportunity for investors to move away from global bond indices and apply the methodology of credit specialists to generate alpha.

The opportunities in the real estate market, both direct and listed, were addressed by the RREEF team in a panel session chaired by Mark Roberts, Head of Research for RREEF. The panel also included Daniel Ekins, Head of Asia Pacific Real Estate Securities and Paul Keogh, Chief Investment Officer for RREEF Asia Pacific. In setting the scene, Mark Roberts highlighted that today only approximately USD 12 trillion of the total USD 19 trillion investable global property market, has been invested.  Globally only 7% of that is invested in public equity.

Nadir Maruf, Head of RREEF Infrastructure, Asia Pacific then discussed the infrastructure space highlighting the unique investment characteristics for investors including the high barriers to entry, stable cash flows that typically carry an inflation hedge, hybrid nature of both fixed income and capital gains and the variety of risk and return profiles. John McCarthy, Global Head of RREEF Infrastructure noted the median return for infrastructure assets was higher than other private equity strategies. John Vojticek, Chief Investment Officer for RREEF Securities reiterated the benefits of infrastructure securities investing for those investors wanting exposure to the asset class but with liquidity requirements.

The focus then turned to the clean tech space where Tim Jordan, ESG Analyst for Deutsche Bank and Mark Fulton, Global Head of Research for DB Climate Change Advisors discussed the economics of climate change and the drivers that have created a megatrend for investment.. This has created a broad investment universe for clean tech with strong interest from capital providers, which was then discussed by Andrew Pidden, Head of RREEF Sustainable Advisors. He discussed key considerations for clean tech investing and shared his views some of the commercial realities of clean tech investment.

Dr. Oliver Kratz from Global Thematic Partners updated the delegates on his thematic view on the world. Dr. Kratz emphasised that personalised medicine will fundamentally change medical treatment options and will provide a strong driver for future investment returns in this area.

Dr. Rolf Wickenkamp highlighted the small-cap and mid-market private equity space in Europe as ripe for investment with lower debt-equity ratios compared to large caps. This is particularly advantageous in times of debt financing scarcity.

In the last investment session of the day, Michael Jiang, Portfolio Manager of Harvest Fund Management provided an overview of Chinese equities and urged investors to think more along thematic lines than simply allocating to the index.

For further information, please contact:

Deutsche Bank AG    
Name : Michelle Chaperon   
Phone: +61 (0) 2 8258 1311
E-mail: Michelle.chaperon@db.com