News

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), announced today that it has been recognized by Ethisphere, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, as one of the 2023 World’s Most Ethical Companies.

Voya has received this honor for 10 consecutive years — every year that the company has been eligible. Voya is one of 135 companies around the world to earn the honor this year — and one of only seven companies recognized in the financial services industry.

BNN Bloomberg (CAN) reported, “Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp., already dominant in technology-stock indexes, are about to become even more so,” after S&P Global Inc. and MSCI’s overhaul of sector benchmark takes effect on Monday. Bloomberg notes, “Payment companies – including Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc., and PayPal Holdings Inc. – will be moved into indexes tracking financial companies, while payroll processors like Paychex Inc. and Automatic Data Processing Inc. will be classified as industrials,” which, while lessening tech’s volume in the S&P 500, will “also making the remaining companies in the industry index more influential,” including Apple and Microsoft which already account for 46% of volume. Leigh Todd, lead portfolio manager of growth equities at Voya Investment Management, comments, “You have to think about how you manage risk given the concentration, since it is very challenging for tech to outperform if Apple and Microsoft aren’t holding in. You want to ensure every company you own can contribute to your returns, and you don’t want to take outsize risk by having extreme concentrations in a small number of names.”

A.M. Best reports, “Greg Michaud has an admittedly unscientific yet simple way to describe what happened to the commercial real estate investment market at the end of 2022.” Voya’s head of real estate finance says, “It just froze,” describing how “his team did about $3 billion of business in the first six months of the year, followed by about $500 million in the second half.” He adds, “I’ve never seen a year that’s been that volatile.” Best’s Review says the COVID-19 pandemic and rising interest rates triggered a “fundamental shift” in the markets, “specifically as to how insurers view commercial real estate investments and which classes attract the most interest.” A.M. Best associate director Jason Hopper says, “Insurers have been moving away from office and retail for a couple of years now, focused more on multifamily and industrial.” He blames inflation and interest rates as the two biggest factors, a conclusion that Michaud does not entirely endorse. Michaud argues, “It was 100% interest rates. Initially what you get as interest rates jump is that people pull back, because all of these owners of property thought they were going to sell it at a low capital rate. Buyers are now unsure where rates are going. I don’t necessarily think interest rates have to drop to make the market move but they have to stabilize.

WisdomTree, Inc. (NYSE: WT), a global financial innovator, and Voya Investment Management Co. LLC (“Voya”), the asset management business of Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), announced today the launch of the WisdomTree Voya Yield Enhanced USD Universal Bond Fund (UNIY) on the NASDAQ. UNIY seeks to track the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Bloomberg US Universal Enhanced Yield Index and has an expense ratio of 15 basis points.

WisdomTree and Voya have a long-standing relationship, with Voya acting as sub-adviser to UNIY, as well as to several of WisdomTree’s portfolios. WisdomTree and Voya’s collaboration on the creation of UNIY is a natural evolution of their relationship and highlights what we believe are the complementary strengths of both firms.

Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), announced that it has earned inclusion in the 2023 Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index (GEI) for the eighth consecutive year. Voya joins 483 other companies as a member of the 2023 Bloomberg GEI, a modified market capitalization-weighted index developed to gauge the performance of public companies dedicated to reporting gender-related data.

Reuters reports equity indexes “closed lower on Wednesday.” The Nasdaq “closed down 1.35%, hitting a new bear-market closing low for the technology-heavy index, as investors shied away from growth stocks and riskier bets.” Wednesday’s loss “marked a drop of more than 36% from Nasdaq’s November record closing high.” Amit Sinha, Head of Multi-Asset Strategy at Voya Investment Management, “said Wednesday’s stock declines stemmed from ‘noise’ such as low liquidity and tax loss harvesting where investors sell money-losing investments.” Sinha said, “Today there’s nibbling away at risk and selling for tax loss harvesting purposes. ... Markets have been going down for the course of December. There’s a negative sentiment and momentum already.” Sinha “sees ‘reasons why people want to sell’ with 2023 presenting uncertainties around the Fed’s rate hiking path in terms of whether it can control inflation without damaging the economy.” He said, “There’s no compelling reason to be on the other side. It exaggerates the price decline.”

A video on Bloomberg featured a panel discussion from Bloomberg’s The Future Investor: Harnessing the Technology of Today. Among the panelists was Voya Investment Management co-Chief Investment Officer for Equities Vincent Costa. Responding to prompt about improvements to 401(k) plans, Costa said, “We’ve seen a lot of improvements even over the past few years, from automatic savings rates and automatic enrollment and customized advice.” He added, “One of the things that I’d like to see is continued flexibility for 401(k) clients.”

Voya Investment Management (Voya IM), the asset management business of Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Czech Asset Management, L.P. (CAM), a leading private credit asset manager dedicated to the U.S. middle market.

“At Voya IM, continuing to build out our range of innovative, private markets and alternative capabilities has been a strategic focus and growth driver for our firm and the industry at large,” said Christine Hurtsellers, chief executive officer, Voya IM. “The team at CAM will complement our leading fixed income platform and accelerate the expansion of our private and leveraged credit franchise across institutional, insurance and retail channels.”

With more than $5 billion of committed capital across four funds since its founding in 2011, CAM specializes in providing privately negotiated first and second lien floating rate senior secured loans primarily to U.S. middle market companies. The CAM team brings to Voya IM strong relationships with a robust group of investment partnerships, including public and private pension funds, endowments, foundations, religious organizations and Taft Hartley plans.

Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA) (“Voya”), announced today that it has completed its previously announced transfer of certain assets and teams comprising the substantial majority of Allianz Global Investors’ (“AllianzGI”) U.S. business (“AGI U.S.”) to Voya Investment Management (“Voya IM”), the asset management business of Voya Financial. AllianzGI and Voya Financial announced on June 13, 2022 that the companies had entered into a definitive agreement regarding the strategic partnership.

Bloomberg reports that “June has been the worst month for U.S. corporate bonds since the start of the pandemic, by at least one measure, but investors like ... Voya Investment Management think it’s too soon to hunt for bargains.” Voya head of U.S. investment-grade corporates Travis King said that with the odds of a recession rising, current corporate debt prices “don’t adequately reflect the risk” of a sustained downturn. King believes that average risk premium spreads below 1.50 percentage points “now feel too low.”