ASSET NOUN (BUSINESS WORLD)

The first word of a number of compounds fashionable in the business and financial world, including: asset card, a US name for the debit card (see card°); asset management, the active management of the assets of a company so as to optimize the return on investments; the job of an asset manager; asset-stripping, the practice of selling off the assets of a company (especially one which has recently been taken over) so as to make maximum profit, but without regard for the company's future; the activity of an asset-stripper. Etymology: The word assets, which originally came from Anglo-French assets (modern French assez enough) was reinterpreted as a plural noun with a singular asset by the nineteenth century; however, it was only in the late twentieth century that it acquired compounds based on this singular form. History and Usage: All three compounds entered the language through US business usage in the mid seventies; asset-stripping had been practised since the fifties, but did not become widely known by this name until the seventies. Asset management and asset-stripping have been widely used in the UK during the eighties, even moving into non-technical usage. By the end of the decade, though, asset-stripping had become an unfashionable name for an activity which financiers now preferred to call unbundling: see unbundle. Guinness Peat's chief executive...reckons that institutions in the post Big Bang City will take one of three forms--bankers, traders or asset managers. Investors Chronicle 1 Nov. 1985, p. 54 The solution...--moving the $2 billion asset card business to...South Dakota--ushered in a new era in interstate banking. US Banker Mar. 1986, p. 42 One of the large mutual fund families...offers not only a variety of funds but an asset management account that would give you a monthly record of all transactions, including reinvestment of dividends. Christian Science Monitor 20 Feb. 1987, section B, p. 2 A more relevant description of Hanson's strategy would be asset-mining rather than asset-stripping; that is, the development of undervalued assets for hidden value. National Westminster Bank Quarterly Review May 1987, p. 27 They were returning...from visiting a foundry in Derby that had been taken over by asset-strippers. David Lodge Nice Work (1988), p. 154