.jpg)
Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME) has published a new book entitled "SPANISH INVESTMENT FUNDS: Growth and efficiency analysis" as part of the company's "Research & Studies" collection. The authors of the book are Professor Luis Ferruz Agudo and his assistant, María Vargas Magallón, both of whom work at the Accounting and Finance Department of the Universidad de Zaragoza. They are part of one of the most prestigious university teams that carry out research into the Spanish investment fund industry.
The main new feature of this work is that it provides the appropriate tools for measuring the efficiency of fund managers and their level of performance. In measuring them, such factors are taken into account as the information available to the manager on the economic cycle, his or her stock picking skills and the market timing. These empirical research reports are illustrated with examples applied to a sample of Spanish investment funds.
The book provides a qualitative and quantitative description of the development process of the Spanish collective investment industry, which is now going through a complex transition process in comparison with other similar sectors in the EU and US. The book also reviews the industry's regulation and its tax regime, which has been helped by the recent legislation initiatives.
The book will greatly contribute to a better understanding of the trends followed by the Spanish collective investment industry, which, according to the authors of the book, has grown considerably over the last two decades. As a percentage of the GDP, Spain's collective investment industry accounts for 30% of its GDP, ranking second in Europe and only lagging France.
Investment funds have become the most booming financial product in Spain over the last two decades. Ferruz Agudo and Vargas Magallón said: "investment funds have proved to be genuine drivers of the savings and investment revolution of Spanish households, which, for the first time ever, have had the chance to enjoy the advantages of having their portfolios professionally and rigorously managed".
This "palpable and considerable social repercussion that investment funds have attained since they took off" is one of the reasons why this team of university students of finance has developed "research methodologies for measuring the efficiency level reached in the management of these products".
The book also offers an overview of the most recent concepts and products such as Exchange-Traded Funds, Open-Ended Investment Funds and Socially Responsible Funds, innovations which have taken centre stage in the "dramatic change the asset management industry has experienced in the last few years" as Jorge Yzaguirre, Equities Director, BME, and Domingo Garcia Coto, Director of Research, BME, state in the book's foreword.
The foreword stresses "the fact that the value of Spanish households´ fund assets between 1990 and 2007 increased by 33 times". It also anticipates "great challenges and opportunities" for financial firms, which in 2008 may mark a turning point in the composition of households assets, with a greater bias towards financial assets.
With the RESEARCH & STUDIES Collection, BME aims to contribute to a greater research and knowledge of the Spanish economy and the framework in which it develops, through the dissemination of original research on the stock market, the world of finance or the economy as a whole. The book is sponsored by the Cámara de Comercio e Industria de Zaragoza and the Universidad de Zaragoza through its own certificate, the Diploma de Especialización en Asesoría Financiera y Gestión de Patrimonios.
