A passing of the baton often prompts a firm's new leadership to take stock. And so Barclays Global Investors has been in a reflective mood about its position in Asia ex-Japan, now that this operation, managed on a day-to-day basis by Robert Haber in San Francisco, is the responsibility of Nigel Williams in London, who is the region's chairman along with Europe.
Williams is the person running BGI's non-US business, except for Japan and Australia, which maintain independent lines. This represents an amalgamation of its international business, as before Asia ex-Japan reported to Garrett Bouton in California, who has retired.
Whereas Bouton ran the firm's iShares exchange-traded funds business,...
