INVESTMENT FOCUS

Case Interactive Media was established by Jim Casella & Austin Ventures' Growth Equity partners. They have formed a team to focus on growth equity/private equity... (More)

Asset International Names Andrew Prozes to Board of Directors

CEO of LexisNexis Group has successfully grown global professional information businesses

NEW YORK, June 7, 2010 – Asset International, Inc. (“AI”), provider of information and technology to the institutional finance industry around the globe, has named Andrew Prozes to its Board of Directors. Mr. Prozes is Chief Executive Officer of LexisNexis Group and serves on the Board of Directors of other prominent companies and institutions.

“As our newest Board member, Andy will be integral to Asset International’s continued expansion via organic initiatives and strategic acquisitions,” said Jim Casella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. “His expertise in growing global professional information and technology businesses fits perfectly with Asset International’s core strategy.”

Don't miss Asset International's coverage of the Dow Jones dramatic drop and the ongoing impact of the Greek debt crisis and the U.K.'s recent election:

Blog by Kip McDaniel
What a 998-Point Drop Means
Yesterday, I spoke with the CIO of the Xerox pension fund, Carol McFate. We were preparing for our ai5000 conference and an interview in the coming weeks, and she made what might have been the understatement of the day: "There is still a lot of uncertainty in markets." This was at 12:03 (EST). The market began its decline around 3:00. A bit of luck on Carol's part, but the fact remains - each day, still, we are only hours away from collapse. Read more...

Opinion
UK Elections 2010: Candidates Await Their Fate
The story of the UK election is that Nick Clegg is inclined to speak first to the Conservatives, and has said as much, the party with the largest number of seats expected to reach 306, some 20 seats short of an overall majority and not enough for the Tories to simply cut a deal with the Right leaning Ulster Unionists. Read more...

The Trade News
US exchanges and regulators investigate market drops
A drop of almost 1,000 points in the US's Dow Jones Industrial Average index yesterday has sparked an investigation from regulators and prompted stock exchanges to cancel trades. Read more...

Opinion
Mutual Funds in Times of Crisis
Senior Managing Director, Head of Global Consulting at Strategic Insight Daniel Enskat examines the influence of mutual funds in turbulent economic time Read more...

Robert X. Cringely
Sometimes Being Clever Isn't Smart
Program trades are clever -- they respond almost instantly -- but they aren't very smart. A trader on his or her first day of work would be smart enough to know something was wrong when Accenture appeared to be selling for a penny. But computers are dumb. Read more...

Planning for 2010 III: Global Allocations for the Optimist: 50/50 or 33/33/33
By Avi Nachmany, Director of Research, Strategic Insight

What are the critical issues facing the mutual fund industry in 2010 and beyond? The following post is the third of a three-part series inspired by Strategic Insight's recently published forecast for the mutual fund industry, "Looking Ahead to 2010." Here, SI Director of Research Avi Nachmany questions the right mix for global asset allocation in an investor's portfolio. Already published is Part I, looking at concerns surrounding bond mutual funds, and Part II, discussing stock mutual funds and the character of America.

Read the entire article...

Read part 1 of this three-part series
Read part 2 of this three-part series

Revisiting Dubai (S)Inc. by Kip McDaniel, Editor-in-Chief, ai5000

Yesterday's news of Dubai World asking for a six-month reprieve on $60 billion in debt repayments has sent global financial markets into a downfall not seen in many months. It should not have: The Emirate's troubles are not a surprise - many observers, including ai5000, have been warning of trouble at Dubai World for months now.

Read the entire article...

Exclusive Invitation: Be Part of an Elite Global Investor Community-ai5000 I want to invite you, as part of the exclusive group of asset owners that drive today's global investment world, to take advantage of a new digital publication focused solely on the issues you consistently face. ai5000, developed and published by Asset International—a leading source of insight and guidance to institutional investors for more than 20 years—is free to you via this invitation. CLICK HERE FOR YOUR COMPLIMENTARY SUBSCRIPTION

CLICK HERE TO SEE INSIDE

Business & Investor Confidence
This past week we heard from Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke that the U.S. recovery would continue to be slow and uneven and that the unemployment rate would remain stubbornly high into 2012. "Of course, even as the Federal Reserve continues prudent planning for the ultimate withdrawal of extraordinary monetary policy accommodation, we also recognize that the economic outlook remains unusually uncertain," Bernanke stated. (More)

Global Brands II
In the fall of '07, my partners at Austin Ventures and I were still in the search mode to find a platform that we could acquire and grow. It was almost a year later when we zeroed in on the institutional financial sector, with a focus on asset management. In fairly short order, we acquired Asset International, The Trade, and Strategic Insight. (More)

Summer Competition
After months of turmoil in the Eurozone and the continuing environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the world was ready for some Summer Competition. Last weekend all the world turned to South Africa for the start of football's World Cup. The host South Africa played Mexico on Friday to a 1-1 tie to kick off the "beautiful game's" global tournament. At the outset we were introduced to the vuvuzela. (More)

May Volatility
Two weeks ago in my posting, $1 Trillion Dollar Rescue Plan & a Changing of the Guard, I closed with: "This was clearly a historic week on the continent and in the United Kingdom. There is a new determination to deal with the structural issues that have left most of the countries with debt loads that the global bond markets can not support in the long run, and there is a new a resolve by these countries to put themselves on a course that will support sustainable long-term growth. The Obama administration will need to start addressing deficit reduction as well as we approach the November mid-term elections. Those of us in the private equity business will be closely watching the impact of government actions on recovering credit markets." (More)

$1 Trillion Dollar Rescue Plan & a Changing of the Guard
As we headed to JFK early on Monday morning for our BA flight to London, we learned that over the weekend the Eurozone leaders had fashioned a rescue plan that went well beyond Greece and assured the world that Spain and Portugal would not be the next dominoes to fall. Shortly thereafter both countries announced new austerity moves to further assure the world debt markets that they were serious about bringing down their debt levels as a percentage of GDP. (More)

More entries from Case Blog...

NEW YORK TIMES (February 27, 2010) Austin Ventures has three entrepreneurs in residence, who are starting companies, and 13 C.E.O.'s-in-residence, who help the firm find late-stage companies to invest in and then run the businesses. Austin hires people it has worked with previously as well as people it doesn't know. "We kind of had an epiphany," says Phil Siegel, an Austin partner. "The competition and the need for talented people is in some ways a lot harder than the competition for deals." Today, 40 percent of the firm's deals come from one of these programs.. Read the full article...

The rapid rise of a middle class in developing nations is set to shake up the asset-management industry. The number of global investors is projected to rise to up to 2.2 billion from about 500 million over the next decade or so, and asset managers will have to adapt within the next few years or be left behind, says Daniel Enskat, head of global consulting at Strategic Insight, a fund research and consulting firm. Read the full article...

The MutualFundWire.com has named Strategic Insight's Director of Research, E.V.P. Avi Nachmany
to its list of Forty Most Influential People in Fund Distribution

The list is based on nominations from the industry and our editorial staff. The final list was selected based on imput from those executives nominated for the list and an analysis of objective criteria including the net flows into each fund complex, total fund assets under management and votes from other nominees. Read the full press release...

Slowdown at the merge
(This article was originally written for BtoB Media Business at BtoBonline.com.) There are three rules for evaluating real estate: location, location, location. And there are three rules for acquiring b-to-b media: timing, timing, timing.For Asset International, which is part of a $950 million Austin Ventures private equity fund, the timing of the down b-to-b media M&A market isn't working out so badly. “Timing has a lot to do with this,” acknowledged Jim Casella, chairman-CEO of Asset International, a media company focused on the global financial industry. (More)

Dow Jones/LBO Wire
Austin-Backed B2B Platform Asset International Buys 2 Cos.
Austin Ventures-backed B2B publisher Asset International Inc. has added two more companies to its portfolio, buying Strategic Insight, a research, data and analytics firm; and The Trade Ltd., a London-based provider of news and events for institutional investors.

Read the full article...

More Case Press...