Investment management in the context of "Goldman Sachs"

Prudential Financial, Inc. is an American financial services company whose subsidiaries provide insurance, retirement planning, investment management, and other products and services to both retail and institutional customers throughout the United States and in over 40 other countries. In 2019, Prudential was the largest insurance provider in the United States with $815.1 billion in total assets. The company is included in the Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 rankings.

Asset management is a systematic approach to the governance and realization of all value for which a group or entity is responsible. It may apply both to tangible assets (physical objects such as complex process or manufacturing plants, infrastructure, buildings or equipment) and to intangible assets (such as intellectual property, goodwill or financial assets). Asset management is a systematic process of developing, operating, maintaining, upgrading, and disposing of assets in the most cost-effective manner (including all costs, risks, and performance attributes).

Theory of asset management primarily deals with the periodic matter of improving, maintaining or in other circumstances assuring the economic and capital value of an asset over time. The term is commonly used in engineering, the business world, and public infrastructure sectors to ensure a coordinated approach to the optimization of costs, risks, service/performance, and sustainability. The term has traditionally been used in the financial sector to describe people and companies who manage investments on behalf of others. Those include, for example, investment managers who manage the assets of a pension fund.

Morningstar, Inc. is an American financial services firm headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, founded by Joe Mansueto in 1984. It provides an array of investment research and investment management services.

With operations in 29 countries, Morningstar's research and recommendations are considered by financial journalists as influential in the asset management industry, and a positive or negative recommendation from Morningstar analysts can drive money into or away from any given fund. Through its asset management division, the firm currently manages over US$295 billion as of March 31, 2023.

An asset management company is an asset management / investment management company/firm that invests the pooled funds of retail investors in securities in line with the stated investment objectives. For a fee, the company/firm provides more diversification, liquidity, and professional management consulting service than is normally available to individual investors. The diversification of portfolio is done by investing in such securities which are inversely correlated to each other. Money is collected from investors by way of floating various collective investment schemes, e.g. mutual fund schemes. In general, an asset management company is a company that is engaged primarily in the business of investing in, and managing, portfolios of securities. A study by consulting firm Casey Quirk, which is owned by Deloitte, found that asset management firms ended 2020 with record highs in both revenue and assets under management.

Institutional customers is a term used in the financial services industry to differentiate customers that are financial institutions or financial advisors, such as banks, insurance companies, and investment management companies, or high asset-customers, from retail and small business customers.

In some jurisdictions, institutional customers such as financial institutions may be able to enter transactions under a more lax regulatory environment than other categories of customer.

Robo-advisors or robo-advisers are financial advisers that provide personalized financial advice and investment management online with moderate to minimal human intervention. A robo-advisor provides digital financial advice that is personalised based on mathematical rules or algorithms. These algorithms are designed by human financial advisors, investment managers and data scientists, and coded in software by programmers. These algorithms are executed by software and do not require a human advisor to impart financial advice to a client. The software utilizes its algorithms to automatically allocate, manage and optimize clients' assets for either short-run or long-run investment.

Robo-advisors are categorized based on the extent of personalization, discretion, involvement, and human interaction. There are over 100 robo-advisory services. Investment management robo-advice is considered a breakthrough in formerly exclusive wealth management services, bringing services to a broader audience at a lower cost than traditional human advice. Robo-advisors collect financial situation information from the client to determine risk tolerance. Then, robo-advisors allocate a client's assets on the basis of risk preferences and desired target return. While robo-advisors have the capability of allocating client assets in many investment products such as stocks, bonds, futures, commodities, and real estate, the advice is often directed towards exchange-traded funds. Clients can choose between offerings with passive asset allocation techniques or active asset management styles.

An index fund is a mutual fund or exchange-traded fund (ETF) designed to follow certain preset rules so that it can replicate the performance of a specified basket of underlying securities (most often a stock market index or a bond market index).

The main advantage of index funds for investors is that they are difficult to outperform consistently. Academic research has consistently found that most active investors (stock pickers) within a given market segment underperform the relevant index after fees and taxes. Investors also do not need to spend time analyzing various stocks or stock portfolios. Thus investors, academicians, and authors such as Warren Buffett, John C. Bogle, Jack Brennan, Paul Samuelson, Burton Malkiel, David Swensen, Benjamin Graham, Gene Fama, William J. Bernstein, and Andrew Tobias have long been strong proponents of index funds.

A private equity firm or private equity company (often described as a financial sponsor) is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of a startup or of an existing operating company with the end goal to make a profit on its investments. The target companies are generally privately owned (not publicly listed), but on rare occasions a private equity firm may purchase the majority of a publicly listed company and delist the firm after the purchase.

To complete its investments, a private equity firm will raise funds from large institutional investors, family offices and others pools of capital (e.g. other private-equity funds) which supply the equity. The money raised, often pooled into a fund, will be invested in accordance with one or more specific investment strategies including leveraged buyout, venture capital, and growth capital. Although the industry has developed and matured substantially since it was invented, there has been criticism of private equity firms because they have pocketed huge and controversial profits while stalking ever larger acquisition targets.