The five alternative investment managers in P&I’s publicly traded manager universe — Apollo Global Management Inc., Ares Management Corp., Blackstone Inc., The Carlyle Group and KKR & Co. Inc. — each had positive AUM growth in the quarter and the year ended Sept. 30 and net inflows in the quarter.
New York-based Ares, for example, had the largest asset growth over the quarter, rising 13.8% to $282 billion. Ares’ AUM was up 57.4% from a year earlier. The firm’s net inflows totaled $16 billion in the quarter.
Assets managed by KKR, New York, totaled $459 billion, up 7% in quarter and up 96.3% for the year ended Sept. 30. Net inflows were $19 billion in the quarter.
Ares’ largest source of new flows from gross capital commitments — $14.9 billion — were to strategies in its credit group, with $7 billion going into U.S. direct lending, the firm’s third-quarter earnings report showed.
KKR doesn’t break out its net flows in the quarter, but the firm said in its earnings release that within its private market strategies, fundraising across its real estate platform accounted for 40% of new capital raised in the third quarter.
ETFs were another areas of strong net inflows in the quarter, said Catherine A. Seifert, vice president and equity analyst at CFRA Research Inc., New York. in an interview.
She noted that most of the ETF growth was in equity ETFs but fixed-income strategies attracted about one-quarter of flows.
One source of ETF net inflows was from money managers, especially private credit managers, which increasingly are using the vehicles to get spread and duration exposure, Willis Towers Watson’s Mr. Delaney said.
BlackRock Inc., New York, had the highest net inflow in the quarter among the 24-manager group — $75 billion — of which $58 billion went into the firm’s ETF offerings, according to the firm’s third-quarter earnings report.
Year-to-date Sept. 30, BlackRock’s total net inflows to ETFs totaled $201 billion. By comparison, the firm’s ETFs attracted $185 billion in net inflows to ETFs in all of 2020.
“We are seeing this momentum across the entire ETFs industry as more and more investors discover the convenience, the efficiency that the ETFs vehicle has,” said Laurence D. Fink, BlackRock’s chairman and CEO, during the firm’s Oct. 13 earnings call with analysts.
BlackRock is the largest manager in P&I’s manager universe, with $9.46 trillion of assets under management as of Sept. 30, down 0.3% in the quarter and up 21.2% for the year ended Sept. 30.
The second largest manager in P&I’s universe, State Street Global Advisors, Boston, saw its AUM decline 0.9% to $3.86 trillion in the three months ended Sept. 30 and rise 22.7% over the year.
One of the reasons for SSGA’s slightly lower AUM may be a sharp decline in net inflows to $13 billion in the third quarter compared to net inflows of $21 billion in the second quarter; $23 billion in the first quarter; and $20 billion in the fourth quarter 2020.
However, SSGA’s net inflows into ETFs totaled $57 billion year-to-date Sept. 30, higher than the total of $44 billion in ETF net inflows in all of 2020.