Institutional Investors

This chapter analyses the different types of institutional investors, institutions which, with various objectives, professionally manage portfolios of financial and real assets on behalf of a plurality of investors. Actually, the lowest common denominator among all categories of institutional investors is represented by the professional management of assets on behalf of a wide variety of individuals. Portfolio management can be carried out on a collective basis, as in the case of the investment funds, or on an individual basis, as in the case of the discretionary mandates given on a client-by-client basis. If this principle is accepted, we can qualify the following investors as institutional: collective investment vehicles; individual portfolio management, based on mandates given by clients on a single and discretionary basis; insurance companies; pension funds; institutions for occupational or personal retirement provisions; foundations and endowments. In this chapter, development factors and benefits for the financial system generated by institutional investors are identified and a comparison is made at the international level.