Asset Allocation – Page 190
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Features
Commodities 'bull market'
The only place where there is currently a pure bull market is in commodities, investment guru Jim Rogers told the SuperHedge conference in Frankfurt last month. Allaying investor fears that commodities are dangerous, the author of bestselling books ‘Hot Commodities’ and ‘Adventure Capitalist’ pointed out that economic history shows there ...
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Features
Great hope of British pensions
It’s very difficult to find anybody to say a bad thing about Adair Turner. The former head of the industry group the Confederation of British Industry, who now heads the UK’s Pension Commission, has a lot of fans. Turner has a blue-chip background in public policy, academia and the financial ...
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Features
The great alpha hunt
Europe’s pension funds are still reluctant to talk about their strategies in terms of alpha and beta. But there is still a need for pension funds and other large investors to gather all the outperformance that they can. The terms ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ are used to name two investment management ...
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Features
Alpha overlay: employing active management risk
In simplest terms, alpha overlay is the process of generating excess returns through active management, independent of an underlying asset class. Properly executed, alpha overlay leads to better investment results with no more risk than traditional investment management for the following reasons: q The total return of a portfolio equals ...
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Features
Testing times for private accounts
If people are free to choose, they will choose freedom. This political philosophy, which was strongly embraced by Thatcher and Reagan in the 1980s, is now at the core of the Bush administration in every field, including economy. It is the very same principle that would justify a pension reform ...
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Features
UK set to offer 50-year bonds
Pension funds will see an immediate benefit from the introduction of 50-year bonds by the UK government from this month. The ultra-long bonds are expected to help pension schemes better match their liabilities and help set the price of the synthetic products being expensively sold by investment banks. Gordon Brown, ...
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Features
Looking for the sweet spot
Sometimes what appears to be a creeping change can turn out to be the forerunner of a seismic shift and that may be the case for what is happening in global bond mandates. Richard Wohanka, CEO of Fortis Investments and with a bond background himself describes the situation: “In the ...
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Features
It's a question of returns
There is some acceptance among pension funds in Europe that tactical asset allocation (TAA) – today’s version of it, at least – can top up their investment returns. But it is only in the Netherlands that TAA is widely used and spoken about. TAA, which can either be done by ...
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Features
Tobback: making his mark
Belgium’s new pensions and environment minister Bruno Tobback has his work cut out. The ever more important and contentious portfolio of pensions offers challenges galore. But to make his mark Tobback must, at the tender age of 35, prove himself against the backdrop of his influential predecessor Frank Vandenbroucke, architect ...
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Features
Greece looks to Ireland for reform model
The Greek government may turn to Ireland for “inspiration” on pension changes, a finance and economy ministry spokeswoman has said. The government is watching the changes launched in the EU member states with similar life expectancy problems for inspiration, the spokeswoman said. For the time being changes to the Greek ...
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Features
Paying for the good life
One of the requirements of membership of the Salvation Army, the quasi-military Christian mission created by William Booth in 1865, is that members abstain from alcohol and avoid tobacco. This has created an unusual situation for the actuaries of the Salvation Army’s UK pension schemes, who have to take account ...
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Features
Mandatory saving not the German way
The government has ruled out the possibility of private saving for retirement in Germany becoming mandatory, saying its pension reforms of 2001 and 2004 should be sufficient. To encourage saving for retirement, the government created Riester Rente in 2001 – second- and third-pillar pensions that qualify for government subsidies. But ...
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Features
Hard going in France
While multi-manager (MM) services have grown dramatically in popularity worldwide, France is one European market where progress has been slow. Foreign entrants to the French MM institutional market have found it particularly hard to make progress, and domestic organisations which set up MM products some years ago have found growth ...
