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FeaturesPerspective: Nicolai Tangen & NBIM
Less than a year after his controversial appointment, criticism of Nicolai Tangen’s leadership of Norges Bank Investment Management is building
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Features
Strategically speaking: Hayfin – no hayseed
Europe’s abortive football super league didn’t collapse from want of loan capital this April. It collapsed, instead, because of a catastrophic lack of cultural fit with the ethos of the sport.
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Features
ESG: Society first, profits second
Asoka Woehrmann and Amin Rajan ask whether social issues will become a permanent driver of investment decisions
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Features
Fixed income, rates, currencies: Still missing the target
Most would agree that one data release from an important but volatile dataset – employment figures – should be read with caveats. However, the scale of the forecasting ‘miss’ for April’s US job numbers was hard to dismiss as just noise.
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Features
Long term matters: Grandpa, what did you do in the COVID wars?
Pharmaceutical companies in the West and their host governments are very confident today, and some even speak of “post crisis investing”. Certainly, pharma’s scientific credentials have been demonstrated and the public in the UK and the US in particular are seeing the potential end to lockdowns.
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Features
Incorporating climate change within investment portfolios
Recording the possible impacts of climate change on investment portfolios is becoming a regulatory and reporting requirement. Asset managers and asset owners will need to incorporate it into future management information and reporting systems.
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Features
Guest Viewpoint: Principles for setting CEO pay
As we emerge from the AGM season, executive pay has, once again, been a lightning rod. Often pay is presented in simple headline numbers and narratives, but, in fact, pay is among the most complicated issues that percolate to board level. In my experience of sitting on boards for more than a decade, there are several principles that should guide the best global companies in setting executive pay.
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Features
Briefing: Credit-risk niche gains interest
In a world of prolonged low interest rates, institutional investors are scouring different pockets of the investment landscape to generate additional returns. One area is capital regulatory transactions, which are far from new but are being put under the microscope for their potential as part of an alternative credit portfolio. However, these transactions can be more complex than other alternative credit asset classes and require specialist expertise, skills and understanding.
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Features
Briefing: China bonding with the world
It is tantalising to imagine the concept – that the standard global fixed-income portfolio, which has stood the test of time for so long, may be about to unravel. The standard bearers – US Treasuries, the UK Gilts, German Bunds and Japanese government bonds (JGBs) – may soon have to share the stage with a brash newcomer: Chinese government bonds (CGBs).
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Features
Briefing: France decrees biodiversity reporting
France, having pioneered mandatory climate-risk reporting by investment firms, again breaks new ground by requiring biodiversity reporting in the same sector.
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Features
Letter from Australia: Coalition mulls super hike
There are arguments both for and against a rise in compulsory superannuation contribution rate as Australia emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic .
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Features
Letter from US: The rise of the new alternatives
Pension funds and other institutional investors used to invest in hedge funds aspiring to outperform public stock and bond benchmarks. Now, after years of disappointing performances, they have changed their attitude. They still invest in hedge funds, but the new expectation is simply to get a few percentage points above the return on zero risk investments.
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Features
Ahead of the curve: Crypto assets
It is no longer prudent to ignore the potential of crypto assets
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Features
Pensions insider: Handling mistrust after a huge loss
In the first in a series of articles aimed at empowering trustees, our expert contributor describes how a pension fund solved a real-life case involving poor judgement by a high-yield bond manager
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Features
Accounting: Getting there eventually
You could be forgiven for thinking that audit reform has a lot in common with online shopping: knowing what you want is the easy part – it is fulfilment that is the let-down.
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Features
IPE Quest Expectations Indicator - June 2021
The UK experience with vaccination suggests that COVID-19 case numbers start falling when about half the population is immunised. The US will soon reach that level. The EU is over the 30% mark while Japan is at 3%. Taking the BRIC countries as a proxy for emerging markets, Brazil scores 16%, while Russia and India have reached about 10%. China has not published its vaccination figures. Meanwhile, new strains remain a source of concern.
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Features
Reporting: Yours sustainably…
You know how one thing can lead to another? Well, that is what happened with the International Financial Reporting Standards Foundation’s steps into sustainability reporting.
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Features
Fixed Income, Rates, Currencies: A false start
While we may be approaching that ‘exit from pandemic’ moment, the exceptional monetary and fiscal responses from policymakers ensure COVID-19’s economic legacy will be felt globally for years to come.
