Actually, that first paragraph was a little white lie. My true motive was to have something to show those friends and family who still think of me as a Chandler Bing character from the show Friends – you know, the guy who goes to work every day and despite hundreds of conversations, nobody actually has a clue what he does for a living. Don’t tell me it doesn’t happen to you as well, we all know the truth…

To give you some background, I work as a Performance Consultant for Anne Harrison, working on projects for both of the teams within our structure – we are a centre of expertise in the Edinburgh office and as such we provide performance measurement for both our UK and Dutch businesses.

So, for what it is worth, I hope you enjoy a little insight into the sometimes interesting, frequently frustrating, occasionally mind-boggling and often hectic world of the Performance Analysis team here at Kames Capital. Please note that these views do not necessarily reflect the views of my colleagues because I didn’t actually tell them I was writing this.

I’ve tried not to make it too formal – after all, I would be happier if you all got to the end without falling asleep.

Monday

My week inevitably starts with a bacon roll (or if my wife is reading this, a bowl of cereal and some toast). Let’s be fair, most of us need something to kick off their working week, especially if they’ve had to watch Dunfermline Athletic on the Saturday.

The team seems quiet today, a few people are grabbing some holidays before the end of the month and three colleagues are out at our office in The Hague to meet with colleagues.

Still, to start a Monday there are always some bizarre weekend stories to be told (take your pick from cowboys to blokes dressed in all-in-one suits – names have been withheld but are available to the highest bidder).

After a quick trawl through my e-mails, including one from Anne in The Hague to make sure that I’ve actually turned up to work, it is time to set out my plans for the day ahead.

I’ve no formal meetings in the calendar for today – an unusual but welcome occurrence that will hopefully allow me to get through a stack of project work.

First on the list today is some work on a reporting process change for the Dutch team, which presents my colleague Kenny and I with a challenge – we need to amend several of our current report formats to meet these new requirements. Unfortunately this proves to be easier said than done, and after much head-banging and frustration, yet another mini project is born. It is often the case that what looks like a small change can turn out to cause a huge amount of work. Without doubt one of the most frustrating parts of our job is the amount of manual intervention relating to what should be routine tasks, something that we are constantly trying to address.

After a Michelin Star lunch from our canteen and a quick scan through the web to see what is happening in the world, it is back to the grind. Or so I thought, as an interesting debate begins as to what team name we should choose for the company quiz night later in the week. Actually, disturbing is probably a better word to describe the conversation, and I’ll leave it at that for the moment – it is a family-friendly publication after all.

The first item on my agenda for this afternoon is to produce the monthly task matrix for the UK performance team. After a review of all new or redundant tasks and a meeting with Rhona, who manages this team, the work for the month ahead is allocated to the relevant analysts. This month, with a new colleague having joined, there are plenty of tasks being moved around. As I’m sure many of you are aware, it pays to cross-train in case of unexpected absences!

Once this has been circulated, it is time to delve into the murky world of data feeds, and my attempt to clean up some issues within a new accounting data feed that has been built over the last few months – data which will ultimately lead to additional performance and attribution reporting for our Dutch colleagues that we were previously unable to provide. With so many different data fields and types to consider, all changes to be made to our feeds must be carefully planned and thoroughly tested before implementation. Some progress is made this afternoon but, as expected, a lot more work will need done by myself and our IT department before the changes are complete.

With my working day over, it is time to head back home to the Kingdom of Fife by travelling like a movie star – in a way. What it really means is a boneshaker of a journey on a train that resembles the Hogwarts Express – take my word for it, if I didn’t see it with my own eyes I would swear that trains this old were all in museums.

Tuesday

Most of the team are back in the office today – and much to my disgust those who were in The Hague have neglected to follow my previous tradition of bringing back the cheapest, nastiest sweets for the team from the Duty Free shop at Schiphol. This is duly noted for future reference.

First up for me is my regular weekly meeting with Anne to discuss all of my ongoing projects and the inevitable additions to my list that have resulted from Anne’s trip to The Hague. Most of these actions surround data feed content and issues (can you see a theme developing here?) and these are duly added to my ever growing project list.

The rest of my morning is taken up with some further changes to processes – at least these ones seem to go more smoothly than those from yesterday.

Lunch is home-made today, saving me both some money and the tough choice of which dish in the canteen that I dislike the least. I did consider chocolate too, but I decide that shaking the vending machine like King Kong to try and get a free bar of chocolate may bring too much attention from around our floor.

I’ve deliberately blocked some time out in my calendar this afternoon to try and make some headway into a couple of things.

Initially I’m going to try and document a full  procedure for one of the most complex manual tasks that fall within the remit of our Dutch team. Good documentation is one of the keys to our success as a team, and despite our reluctance for manual processes, these are inevitable given the range of output that we are asked for. As such, we need to have precise guides for each of these tasks to ensure accuracy at all times.

The rest of the afternoon is spent with my thinking cap on – the senior members of the team have a planning session tomorrow and it is important to make sure that nothing is missed. Although some of the content will be plainly obvious (training etc), it is a great chance for us all to have our ideas heard and try to ensure that the team is as best prepared as possible for the undoubted challenges that lie ahead in the coming year.

With brain hurting I head for Platform 9^3/4 for the train home. On the agenda tonight is a game of football and a good chance to let out frustrations by kicking both a ball and some friends for an hour.

Wednesday

A very busy Wednesday ahead, with five meetings planned.

Three of these meetings are with my colleagues from our Dutch performance team. I’m trying to understand some of the issues that are causing reconciliation breaks on their funds each month, with a view to getting these fixed. While I’m sure under time pressure it is easier to find the problem and fix it yourself, ultimately we’re striving for perfection with these data feeds. Once I’ve collected the thoughts from the team, these issues will be raised with our colleagues in The Hague who are responsible for the feed, and we’ll try to get as much sorted as we can. It is amazing how much time and effort can be saved with better quality of data.

A brief meeting with our IT development this morning too, to go over a few changes to one of our processes. As always, what seems to me to be fairly complicated is greeted with “that’s pretty easy, shouldn’t be a problem” – just the kind of response we were hoping for.

At high noon comes the kind of meeting I like – with food served! This is a planning meeting for the months ahead, with Anne and the senior team members having a chance to brainstorm and get a lot of ideas put down on paper. Oh, and to eat. Even for me there was far too much food, so the leftovers are picked up by some of the other guys in the team and our “human dustbins” will no doubt make light work of what is left.

It was a very productive session, and I think we’ve come out with fairly clear ideas of the challenges ahead along with priorities for the team, from projects to training. Those responsible for each area can now make more detailed plans for their teams.

After the last of my data feed meetings today, it is back to analysis time for me. I’ve come across another issue with the new data files that we have been building, and I need to trawl through the spreadsheets of raw data to try and identify a solution that suits us, but doesn’t break anything else and is manageable for our IT team to implement.

Anne also informs me that of these new funds, there is now a small subset of funds that have been deemed a higher priority for reporting. At this point it is time to load the data into our live system, and while I know what issues we have, I’ll at least be able to correct any issues manually to allow things to move on to the next stage.

Home time – as always, one of my main challenges is the train. Tonight I’ve made a bit of a schoolboy error and have appeared first at the door of the train, which means it is up to me to get the door open. Getting your arm out of the window to reach round and open the door is akin to one of those things I see people do on a games console where you press every button simultaneously in an effort to contort your character into some ridiculous pose. Battered and bruised, I finally get off the train.

Thursday

Thursday starts with some further work on process documentation, and a walk-through test of a new procedure to make sure that nothing has been missed or is incorrect.

The next task today is a follow-up from Monday and the changes in process for one of our Dutch performance reports. This is down to the deadline for these changes being brought forward, and so some juggling of workload will need to be done to accommodate this. We map out what we think will need done before making any fundamental changes to the calculations and reports.

A team lunch has been organised for today for various reasons, and so at noon the desks empty and everyone heads for lunch. Well, not everyone – Richard, who manages the Dutch team, has some urgent work to complete, and as for me, a trip to the dentist later this afternoon means that I abstain. By all accounts everyone has had a good lunch, backed up by the fact that I think several of them have fallen asleep by 3pm.

My afternoon is spent working on the same project as this morning. Despite many challenges and questions, we make some promising progress. The optimism is short-lived though, as we realise the sheer amount of work that will be involved in rolling out these changes to the rest of the affected funds in the relatively short time period available to us.

As mentioned earlier this week, the company quiz night takes place tonight, and being defending champions, the team is fairly confident that our mix of knowledge will see us put up another good show tonight. After all, having such specialist subjects as 80s music, football, 80s music, football, 80s music and er, football should see us through. Watch this space . . .

Friday

Whoever said that lightning doesn’t strike twice was wrong. Unbelievably, after a tension filled evening, our quiz team once again claimed the trophy (a glittering gold effort to go with our silver one from last year). Despite a couple of ropey rounds and some unwarranted abuse surrounding our team name, we sneaked the win by a very small margin. A good team effort with everyone contributing, with a special mention to Wesley for sportsmanship – shouting out one of the answers to make sure all teams heard it and got an extra point! In a blatant attempt to milk our victory for all it is worth, the trophies from 2011 and 2012 are placed in the middle of the desks for all passers-by to see. We have been assured that should we win next year, the trophy will be so small that no-one can see it.

Back to the grind this morning though, and with it being the second business day after month end, the teams are starting to get busier with the first batch of monthly reports, including peer group reporting, data checking, data loading and some preparation for the main data feeds arriving at the start of next week.

First for me though is some analysis work based on data from our TPA, and some of the potential issues with the content. A bit of progress made and a meeting arranged for later in the month to discuss with them.

I also spend some time completing a new procedure note for roll-out to the Dutch team in the very near future.

Next this morning is a project meeting around KIID documents. There is plenty to discuss as always and plenty of actions for me around the production of past performance numbers and SRRI measures – more to add to my “to do” list!!

At lunchtime Anne has bought some goodies for us to celebrate our quiz success. Now these are incredibly unhealthy, but it would be rude not to try at least one of each . . . .

Early afternoon sees me looking at some of my actions from the KIID meeting, and trying to figure out the most efficient way of producing the information required from our team going forward. This will then be documented and the task will be allocated to one of the analysts in the team.

Anne decides that I need more to do and asks me to investigate some numbers on one of our Dutch performance reports – another quick induction to a process that I haven’t previously been involved with.

The middle of the afternoon is taken up with a conference call to our new Multi-Manager Property team. This allows us to give some background to what we currently do, and to find out what reporting and analysis the new team would like from us on an ongoing basis. This is a very positive call and hopefully we can help the new team with some performance reporting when they are up and running.

The last stretch toward the end of Friday is trying to get a few small tasks finished ahead of what will be an incredibly busy week next week, trying to juggle multiple projects with assisting the teams with anything I can during their month-end production cycle.

At last it is time to head home, and along with Harry, Ron, Hermione and Professor Dumbledore (thanks do my daughter for the right Harry Potter names), I get on the Hogwarts Express, once again in the forlorn hope that come Monday morning, there might be a train to work that doesn’t require anyone to shovel coal to get it moving, and Dunfermline might have 3 more points in the Scottish Premier League.

The specialist fund is designed to offer investors increased access to long-term capital growth, as well as lowering the targeted volatility of those returns.

Rory Bateman, Head of European equities at Schroders, suggests that the company has recently seen an increasing demand for a European equities product with the ability to limit non-stock specific risk, considering the volatility across European markets presently.

The new fund will be managed primarily by Nicholette MacDonald-Brown, Senior Portfolio Manager on the European equities team. Her principal role will involve the selection of stock while attempting to lower volatility by adjusting the fund’s exposure to the market.

This will be done mainly through the tactical use of fixtures, derivatives and cash.

The move from Schroders is in line with a pattern of money being pumped back into equity funds during 2012, with many analysts predicting that this trend will continue. Skandia recently stated that they expected a “wall of money” to flow back into this area in the coming year.

iShares, Blackrock’s exchange-traded funds arm, have warned caution in this practice and encouraged companied to focus their attention mainly on Northern Europe.

“With the European crisis dragging on and Europe likely to experience at least a mild recession this year, stocks in the region have become very cheap. We still, however, continue to hold a neutral view of the region overall and to advocate avoiding large parts of Europe – particularly Spain and Italy.

“Much of Northern Europe arguably represents a good value for long-term investors when you consider these countries’ current valuations, relative growth prospects and perceived risk.”

Schroders clearly feel that the European equity markets could be potentially highly lucrative, only time will tell if they have got their instincts and their sums correct.

The firm currently handles a total of £24bn across its portfolio of hedge funds, fund of private equity funds, pan-alternatives and multi-asset/multi-manager strategies. The change of name is principally designed to highlight the broader capabilities of the brand.

Anne Richards, Chief Investment Officer at Aberdeen Asset Management, feels the change will allow the company to demonstrate an increased emphasis on multi-asset and multi-management capabilities.

“It (the name change) opens the door to some broader conversations about how we can help clients in thinking about the totality of their problems, rather than the individual components of it,” stated Richards.

Multi-asset strategies are designed to allow fund managers to invest across a wide range of assets from equities, commodities and bonds to private equity and hedge funds. They can then adjust their allocations to each in response to any potential market moves.

Richards added that clients are “beginning to understand that it’s not about wanting this specific mandate or that specific asset, it’s about the outcome, rather than the individual bucket.”

This news follows recent reports that Credit Suisse sold a 5% stake in Aberdeen Asset Management, reducing their overall interest in the firm to less than 15%.

The sale of the stake is thought to be due to regulatory reasons, and it now makes Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group the company’s largest investor. Bloomberg data suggests that they now own 18% of the overall company.

Aberdeen Asset Management issued a total of 207.5 million new shares to the Zurich-based firm after completing the purchase of a portion of Credit Suisse funds in 2009. At one point, Credit Suisse held a stake equivalent to 23.9% of Aberdeen following the transaction.

The move will add a further $28bn to the firm’s AuA (Assets under Administration), and is primarily designed to support part of the Swiss investment bank’s US-based alternative investments business.

A Citigroup statement suggested that the move will include middle-office, custody and hedge fund administration services.

Mike Sleightholme, Head of the global hedge fund services with Citi’s global transaction services, felt that the move demonstrated a chance to showcase the company’s “expert staff and leading technology.”

As part of the deal, a section of the middle office operations within Credit Suisse’s asset management division will be moved onto Citi’s service platform.

This includes operations, technology and data management capabilities.

Nigel Hill, Global head of liquid investments operations in Credit Suisse’s asset management division, felt the move offered Credit Suisse the chance to expand their profile.

“Our relationship with Citi gives us the opportunity to enhance our daily operations and the services we provide to our clients in a highly scalable manner,” stated Hill.

As of the fourth quarter of 2011, Citi had a total of $12.5 trillion in assets under custody. Credit Suisse’s Asset Management has $451 billion in assets under management.

The move represents a major coup for the American multinational financial services corporation. The company currently has the world’s largest financial services network, covering 140 countries across the world.

They will be hopeful that this move will follow on from a fruitful recent past which has seen them recover well from the 2008 financial crisis. In 2010, the company achieved their first profitable year since 2007, reporting $10.6 billion in net profit, compared to a $1.6 billion loss in 2009.

The front – and middle – office investment management solutions provider will look to provide Tisco fund managers with real-time compliance and monitoring as well as a multi-asset portfolio.

The system will accommodate the full remit of 500 funds which are currently under Tisco’s management. These include a diverse range of investment funds such as private, provident and mutual funds.

Miss Araya Thirakomen, Managing Director of Tisco, stated her excitement about the move:

“As a leading Thai asset management firm, we have a vision to create wealth for our clients by providing a complete line of asset management products. We manage more than 500 funds with a combined AUM of over 130,000 million baht, hold the top three positions in private and provident funds management and have the highest number of provident funds customers in Thailand.”

The system which Charles River Development plans to put in place will be designed specifically to do two key things, improve time/data efficiency and enhance staff performance. This will subsequently allow the Tisco fund managers to focus on managing investment portfolios for their numerous clients.

Miss Thirakomen added: “With impending regulatory changes set to open up the markets in our region, the Charles River IMS will enable us to support increased mandates and multi-asset, multi-currency instruments.

We are a market leading provider of Foreign Investment Funds (FIF) in Thailand and the Charles River IMS will enable us to provide our clients with a wider range of investment services to choose including all funds that will be affected by the new rules and regulations.”

Tisco will be hopeful that the new system allows them to expand the number of services they can offer their clients, considering the impending ASEAN Economic Community regulatory changes which are set to come into force very soon.

The firm has also gone a step further and automated the process of sending market and custodial data to its portfolio management system, Advent Portfolio Exchange.

“Manually importing data into the portfolio management software is costly, time-consuming and can potentially lead to errors,” said Daniel Eriksson, vice president of product management and solutions consulting, Advent Software EMEA. “Advent’s goal is to provide solutions for EMEA investment managers that eliminate the need for these manual processes, offering them the assurance that the critical data they rely on is accurate and reliable.”

The expansion has partly been attributed to a growth in the EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) sector of the business. Advent Software has also recently opened new London base to accommodate the increase in EMEA trade.

Commenting on move, Håkan Valberg, senior vice president and general manager, Advent Software EMEA said: “By providing standardised connectivity specific to the EMEA market, we are making it easier for investment managers to manage their data and investments, reducing operational risk.

“In addition, local custodians are able to provide client services at their highest level, with improved speed, consistency and efficiency. We have aggressively added custodial connections throughout the region and improved connectivity in EMEA.”

The firm revealed that figures for its consultancy in the region have doubled in a year on year comparison. The boom in the EMEA market has been stimulated by a number of factors, including more stringent regulation in the EU’s financial services sector. There are roughly 100 regulations that are set to affect the European market, according to Advent, which call for increasingly flexible solutions for the asset management industry.

In addition, there has been a rise in demand for solutions in how to process non-Sharia and Sharia compliant services and products in the Middle East. Sharia-compliant assets are growing at three to four times the rate of non-Sharia compliant assets.

Other trends identified by the firm include a move towards cloud software. Thomas Zdon, Advent’s vice president of Business Development and Solutions, forecasts that a growing number of businesses will have software and solutions delivered online as opposed to using an onsite service.