Asset Allocation – Page 200
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Features
EMD grows to maturity
Emerging market debt (EMD) has certainly hit the headlines in recent years. Argentina defaulted in 2001; in January 1999 in Brazil the real was devalued by 40%; Russia restructured its debt in 1999, while in 1997 the Asian crisis saw a collapse in investor confidence spread among the region’s countries. ...
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Features
Playing safe in Europe
The strengthening euro and the poor prospects for Euro-zone growth have combined to create a condition among Euro-zone equity investors which Rick Lacaille, chief investment officer at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), describes as “Eurogloom”. “At the start of the year, analysts had generally been too optimistic by an ...
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Features
Pooling power and fears for the Swiss second pillar
A London conference on pension pooling learnt that not only could the market be worth up to a trillion euros over time – but that the technique might even be a way for corporate schemes to take trustees out of the loop. “We’re talking about very big asset pools,” Willie ...
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Features
Norway's funds take stock
Norway’s hard-pressed life insurers and pension funds have enjoyed a brief respite over the past year. This has been provided by the Norwegian stock market which, helped by rising oil prices, has strongly outperformed international equity markets. Norwegian equities rose 25% in the first nine months of 2004 and 120% ...
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Features
Hitting the right mark
The message from the asset management community in Denmark is broadly: ‘It’s still tough out there but it has been a lot tougher.’ In part the difficulties are a result of changes as pension fund and other institutional investors reassess their positions after the 2000-2002 market collapse. But it is ...
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Features
Smooth transition launches streamlined new structure
To ensure its future success in a fast-changing pensions market, Munich-based Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK), an independent pensions holding company with over 1.5m active members and retirees and a capital value at 31 December 2003 of €31.4bn, felt it needed a new structure that was not only cost-effective, efficient and transparent ...
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Features
Nordic markets look for more
The market for asset management in Sweden is notoriously overcrowded, and for years a feature of Stockholm’s financial scene has been the large number of asset managers looking for a limited amount of institutional business. “There are few markets that have the same level of competition and the same number ...
