SLI's Clark: If people want to emulate GARS, they are welcome to try

‘If people want to emulate what we did with GARS, they are welcome to try’

Standard Life Investments' global client head Colin Clark talks about the firm's insurance heritage, its plans to move GARS forward, and its acquisition of Ignis.

The financial crisis has been good to Standard Life Investments. Against a backdrop of historically low interest rates, income-focused fund houses have struggled to generate yields for clients, prompting investors to turn to the growth and absolute return products for which SLI has become known. Nowhere has this trend been more apparent than with the firm’s Global Absolute Return Strategies fund, better known as GARS. Launched just a few months before the market collapse of September 2008, the fund now has retail assets of £20bn and a further £10bn in institutional mandates. The fu...