Episode summary
'We Are All In on Active' Investing, MFS CEO Says | At Barron's
At Barron's
· · Hosts: Andy Serwer · Guests: Ted Maloney
Summary
Ted Maloney says MFS is “all in on active” investing and believes the firm’s edge comes from a long-term culture built around client trust, teamwork, and ethics. He says his background as a longtime investor helps him keep the company focused on delivering for existing clients rather than chasing the next sale, and he frames that as central to MFS’s identity after 101 years.
He argues that active management still has a meaningful role even as passive investing has gained share. Maloney says today’s highly concentrated equity indices have created a period in which passive can outperform, but he believes that concentration is unsustainable and that active managers will regain an advantage when markets broaden out. He also says MFS is managing around the Magnificent 7 while looking for opportunities across small-, mid-, large-cap, U.S., global, and international strategies.
MFS is also pushing active ETFs as a packaging choice while staying committed to mutual funds. Maloney says the firm is not targeting asset-gathering goals, is not leaning into private markets, and is instead focused on client needs, advice relationships, and keeping investors invested over long horizons. He says the biggest signal from clients is the large amount of cash on the sidelines, which he views as a risk for long-term returns.
Key takeaways
- Maloney says MFS is “all in on active” and expects active management to regain importance as market concentration fades.
- He says the firm is not setting asset targets, because assets should follow client-first execution rather than drive the strategy.
- Maloney says MFS has launched active ETFs, but views ETFs as a wrapper choice rather than a shift away from active investing.
- He says the biggest client-sentiment signal is “an enormous” amount of cash on the sidelines, which he sees as a long-term risk.
- Maloney says MFS is not pursuing private markets, preferring to focus on public equities and fixed income where it believes it can be world-class.
Notable quotes
“Well, we are all in on active and and we believe that there will be a meaningful place for active management over the long term”
“the level of concentration that the market's at today is beyond anything that we've seen in in history”
“we think that there are tremendous opportunities outside them”
“we are all in on advice and so we partner with really strong advisor firms”
“The amount of cash on the sidelines uh is enormous”
How the episode opens
Hello everyone and welcome to At Barrens. I'm Andy Sir and welcome to our guest Ted Maloney, CEO of MFS. Ted, great to see you. It — Is really great to be here. — I want to ask you about um your role, your new role. You came in as CEO. You've been at the company for a very long time. We'll get to that, but you became CEO in January. What are you looking to continue to do at the company the company's been doing for a long time? And what are you looking to do differently?
Well, the most important thing in my job and really at our company is our culture. Uh, so we're a collection of individuals working together as teams to deliver excellent results for our clients. And the culture is one that we're very proud of that we've curated carefully over more than a hundred years as a firm.
And uh while we will continue to evolve that culture, keeping the real foundational pillars of it is something that will never change in terms of laser focus on delivering for clients over the long term um with rocksolid ethics. Uh we understand at the end of the day we're in the business of earning our clients trust every day. We can lose it in one day.
All that we've built over 101 years. So that's something that will never change for us. As we think about what will change um again we're continually evolving.
Markets evolve, the marketplace evolves. Uh and so as it does, we'll look at where we see opportunities for our clients and try to take advantage of market volatility and the like to to deliver that. And one real opportunity we see is that um we we think the fixed income is a pretty interesting asset class for our clients and one where we can do a lot more for our clients over time.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- active investing
- passive investing
- client needs
- investment management competition
- asset management strategy
Companies and tickers mentioned
- MFS Investment Management
Watch the episode
Watch “'We Are All In on Active' Investing, MFS CEO Says | At Barron's” on YouTube
Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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