Investment & Pensions Asia
‘Investment & Pensions Asia’
Just click on any magazine cover to launch a full copy of that magazine online.
Investment & Pensions Asia (available to view into digital format here) is a new quarterly magazine from IPE, focusing on institutional investment opportunities and market developments in Asia. It is written for the buy-side of Asia’s investment community – pension funds, provident funds, endowments, charities, central banks and state boards, insurance companies and asset management firms.
IPA appears quarterly; the latest edition, First Quarter 2008, features Australia as the cover story. The magazine includes an assessment of how the new Australian government is going to treat superannuation. We also look at the large number of foreign asset managers who are looking to gain a slice of this captive super business. And seasoned Australian institutional investors provide readers with some useful insights into how they run their portfolios.
Investment & Pensions Asia provides a forum for institutional readers to be briefed on opportunities occurring within Asian strategic investment and within national pension systems. The attention of global players, from pension funds to hedge funds, is increasingly focused on their Asia regional development. An illustration of how important Asia is becoming to institutions outside the region is the recent decision of the Dutch civil servants pension fund ABP, to open an office in Hong Kong. Such organisations, who are IPA’s core readers, need to keep a close watch on what is happening in Asia, as it becomes a more important region for investment by non-Asian investors.
Previous issues of IPA have highlighted Asia’s other major markets, such as China, India and Japan. India’s emergence as a major investment destination has been overshadowed by China, but as IPA’s extensive report showed, there are real opportunities for foreign investors. Around $5bn of private equity investment flowed into India in 2005, more than double the previous year’s figure. Local market regulation is being liberalised, infrastructure is slowly improving and foreign investment groups are now taking India more seriously.
Our studies of developing pension markets have focused on countries such as Korea, Malaysia and Pakistan. IPA takes input from a wide variety of information sources and taps into the expertise of professionals in their respective fields. IPA’s Managing Editor, Richard Newell, has been writing about Asia and travelling around the region for the past 15 years. He believes IPA readers will benefit from the style and quality of coverage that has characterised IPE in Europe over the last 10 years. In the first edition, he wrote of how investment capital is increasingly being focused on Asian market opportunities: “The ongoing liberalisation of Asian markets, the region’s continued and rapid economic expansion and the increasing influence of globalisation, have contributed to a substantial improvement in investment sentiment towards Asia.”
One of the most exciting aspects of the Asian growth story is the projection being made for many of the region’s pension markets in the next 10 years. OECD numbers suggest that between now and 2015, China’s pension savings market will grow from $7.6bn to $125bn, India’s from $4.5 billion to $150bn, Korea from $29bn to $250bn, while Australia’s market is expected to treble in size, from $490bn to over $1.7trn.
The pages of IPA will reflect these developments and provide institutional investors with practical guidance on how best to manage their own portfolios as Asian markets expand and mature. You are welcome to look through past issues of IPA using our special page-turning facility on these web pages. If you would like to receive a hard copy of the magazine, send us your details and we will send it to you free of charge.
For all editorial enquiries, contact Richard Newell at richard.newell@ipe.com
