ING: Interview mit Stan Beckers, CEO
Stan Beckers spricht im Interview über seine Pläne bei ING: „Die größte Gesellschaft zu werden, ist nicht zwingend unser Ziel, denn ein solcher Status ist schwer zu halten.“29.04.2014 | 09:25 Uhr
It’s all about focus. Being the biggest is not our goal, because that is hard to keep up. Which players were the biggest in the City thirty years ago? They are all gone and forgotten. It’s better to be medium-sized, make clear choices in what you do and then do it well. You can keep that up much longer.
So says ING Investment Management CEO Stan Beckers. The Belgian took up his position nine months ago. Every morning, he gets up at five o’clock and goes for a run. Having already run the New York and Rotterdam marathons, this year he is preparing for the Luxembourg marathon.
When he first joined ING IM in July of last year, he saw a company with ‘great potential’, but also an organisation that was somewhat frustrated by being forced to split up. The general feeling was: this is being sold off, that is being sold off, what’s going to be left?
Beckers is a former professor of Finance at Leuven University, and is co-founder and tool developer for Barra, which is now part of MCSI. After that, he worked at WestLB Asset Management, Kedge Capital and Barclays Global Investors, which was later taken over by BlackRock.
Beckers joined ING at the time when the split had been completed and it was possible to further build up on a clear-cut strategy towards an independent future.
ING Investment Management is expected to go public later this year, together with ING’s European insurance arm. As announced previously, the brand name of this new company will be NN, as part of which ING IM will operate under the name of NN Investment Partners.
Quantitative tools
‘We are already leading in a number of products and in certain markets,’ says Beckers. ‘We will attempt to expand in those fields and add several more.’
He stresses that the ‘raw material’, the ‘core assets’ of an asset manager, are the people who work for the company.
To regain impetus, he is doing a ‘combination of things’. First of all, he wants to highlight ‘what we are really good at’. ‘We are currently market leader in the retail sector in the Netherlands and Poland. Consequently, we have also launched our execution-only platform in those markets and are planning to expand it.’
‘Moreover, we must not forget that we are still a global player, active in eighteen countries and really strong in a number of fields when it comes to fixed income: credit, high yield, emerging market debt and, in terms of multi-asset, total return products and balanced funds. We will proudly build upon these areas in the future. ‘When it comes to equities, the focus areas are high dividend, sustainable equities and emerging market equities. Yet, there is still a lot to be done here, especially in emerging market equities. However, this is perfectly complementary to what we are doing in emerging market debt.’
Beckers does not rule out the possibility of acquisition to reinforce this specialism. He says he is currently in dialogue about this with both individuals and groups of people.