All Features articles – Page 15
-
FeaturesBriefing: Insurance-linked securities
Hurricane Ida in late August and early September caused great damage to the southern coast of the US. Fortunately, for people in this area, insurance policies often cover destructions to their properties. Since covering such damage can lead to severe losses for insurance companies, they are keen to reinsure themselves.
-
FeaturesSaudi Arabia at the crossroads
As the liberal democracies of the world resign themselves to dealing with the aftermath of the US pull-out from Afghanistan, they face the fact that, as former UK prime minister Tony Blair stated recently, “despite the decline in terrorist attacks, Islamism, both the ideology and the violence, is a first-order security threat”.
-
FeaturesAhead of the curve: The good, the bad and the ugly of momentum investing
Last year proved a remarkable one for momentum strategies. The tech giants that had done so well in recent years continued to outperform at the beginning of 2020, and the same high momentum names were further buoyed by investors’ preference for the digital over the physical economy with the onset of COVID-19.
-
-
-
FeaturesIPE Quest Expectations Indicator: November 2021
In Brazil, India and Japan, figures for new COVID-19 infections are low and descending. In the EU, they are low and rising, in particular in the former eastern bloc countries and areas. The US curve is going down fast from a high level. The statistics for Russia and in particular the UK are worrisome to bad. These two countries have relied on vector-based vaccines that are, on average, less effective.
-
FeaturesPerspective: Time to weigh collective DC
The UK finally legislates for a collective alternative to pure DC. But will employers be interested?
-
Features
Pensions Insider: A tricky business: compensation for mismanagement
In the fourth of a series of articles aimed at empowering trustees, our insider discusses what happened in a case of fraud
-
FeaturesBriefing: Private market fees
In today’s low-interest-rate and low-return environment, investing in private markets has become a requirement for virtually every institutional investor. Private markets are where investors can obtain the extra returns they need and can no longer earn from listed assets, thanks to the liquidity premium and higher risk/return profile of non-listed assets.
-
FeaturesBriefing: Germany’s Spezialfonds are weathering the crisis well
Institutional investors in Germany continue to invest in funds despite the challenging conditions. In the middle of 2021, the volume of Spezialfonds – Germany’s vehicle for professional investors – on the Universal-Investment platform stood at almost €474bn. This represents an increase of 36% over the past 12 months. According to most observers, it has been one of the most exceptional periods in a long time.
-
FeaturesFixed income, rates, currencies: Not quite back to normal
As the world struggles to get back to pre-pandemic conditions, with schools and offices open, economic forecasting seems even less predictable than ever. Take August’s US payrolls report, which again confounded most forecasters. Analysts scrambled to explain why the headline job gains were so weak, particularly after the huge (forecast-beating) gains the previous month.
-
FeaturesStrategically Speaking: Aviva Investors
Insurance-owned asset managers can be difficult to pigeonhole. Some have forged strong specialisms, often in fixed income, but now also in alternatives like property or niche credit. Others have remained a corporate backwater absorbed by group general-account assets.
-
FeaturesLong term matters: Vaccine apartheid and investors
This column last covered COVID-19 vaccine inequity in June. Since then, using The Economist’s model of “excess deaths”, there may have been more than 4m deaths globally. That means 37,700 people dying every day, arguably unnecessarily. This number comes with many caveats but it’s possible (indeed probable) that the figure could be much higher.
-
FeaturesAhead of the curve: The future of quant credit
The past several decades have seen quantitative strategies established as an important feature of global equity markets. In 2019, less than one quarter of the more than $30trn (€25trn) of US equities was held by human-managed funds.
-
FeaturesAgriculture: Time to rethink farming
The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in August, provides grim reading. According to the summary for policymakers: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred.”
-
FeaturesAccounting: A costly mistake
Maybe you missed it. Or perhaps you were stuck in some interminable queue at an airport. But the United Kingdom’s audit watchdog revealed in August that a disciplinary tribunal had slapped audit giant KPMG with a £13m (€15m) fine, parked it on the naughty step with a severe reprimand, and ordered it to conduct a series of reviews into what went wrong.
-
FeaturesBriefing: Is equity duration risk about to step into the limelight?
In his memoirs, Sir Laurence Olivier tells how, in 1967, he was suddenly taken ill during a National Theatre production of August Strindberg’s Dance of Death. His understudy stepped into the role for just four nights, but in that short time, “.…walked away with the part of Edgar like a cat with a mouse between its teeth”. A star was born. Fifty-five years later, Sir Anthony Hopkins, with a career just as stellar as his one-time mentor, was the oldest-ever recipient of an Oscar for best actor.
-
-
-
FeaturesIPE Quest Expectations Indicator - October 2021
The much-feared post-summer holiday effect on COVID-19 contaminations did not materialise. The current wave started earlier and statistics are already trending down in the US, EU, UK and Japan, although still at a high level. Full vaccinations are over 60% in the EU and UK, with Japan catching up fast. Emerging markets are still significantly behind in tackling the pandemic.
