Mark Gilbert , Columnist

Can Active Funds Beat Passive? UBS Says Yes -- in Europe

It's hard to get an informational advantage in the U.S.

October 24, 2017 at 8:03 AM UTC

Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering asset management. A former London bureau chief for Bloomberg News, he is author of “Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable.”

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It is a truth (almost) universally acknowledged these days that an investor in want of a good fortune needs to be in possession of an index-tracking fund rather than an active manager. UBS AG, though, disagrees -- at least in Europe.

The Swiss bank's analysts, led by Michael Werner, who covers the fund management industry from London, crunched the numbers for more than 27,000 European mutual funds. In a research note published Monday, they conclude that actively managed funds have handily outpaced not only their benchmarks, but also their passive competitors in European equities.