Asset Management Industry: from Emergence to the Uprising of New Risks

In the early 1980s, various reports and analyses promoted the emergence of investment funds. The objective was to attract savings to the financial markets, in order to compete with bank financing, thus reducing the cost of financing and encouraging investment. On the one hand, the size of the asset management industry today illustrates the success of this ambition. Both household and institutional investors' savings are more diversified than they were forty years ago. On the other hand, new market risks and an ambivalent impact on financing and investment are dampening this success and currently worrying regulators.