All Features articles – Page 233
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Features
Structures for all seasons
The pension fund environment has changed tremendously over the past few years, with long-term objectives tending to be replaced by a shorter-term focus. These changes have been predominantly driven by new accounting standards, evolving regulation and particularly adverse financial markets. The new IAS 19 accounting rules have repositioned corporates’ pension ...
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Features
Does one size fit all?
Blessed with accessible investments worth around £300bn (e 443.2), the UK property market is Europe’s largest, and is also the continent’s most transparent, liquid and diverse. As a result, the market is often the first choice for cross-border investment and so around 15% of it is held by foreign visitors. ...
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Features
Alpha transport - exploiting inefficient markets
Institutional investment portfolios have typically been constructed around a strategic policy portfolio and where investors believed that they could identify managers with skill, they adopted an active strategy to add value relative to that benchmark. Where active management is adopted there are two sources of return – the return attributable ...
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Features
Emerging market debt: a maturing asset class
Investors should consider emerging market debt (EMD) as a key component of a diversified portfolio. Despite various crises during the 1990s, EMD has outperformed versus all other asset classes over the last ten years (see Table 1). And, because the asset class is more closely aligned to other risk assets, ...
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Features
Return to balanced?
Changing views in the pensions industry on the role of active management within portfolios has led to a rise in new balanced mandates, say consultants. But is it really best to use a single investment house for such a wide variety of different assets? Anthony Ashton, head of global client ...
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Features
Don't bank on it
Portugal’s pensions landscape is subject to a two-tier domination by the main banks which provide their clients with a range of financial services, including pension management. According to figures from APFIPP, the Portuguese Association of Investment Funds, Pension Funds and Asset Managers, the Pension Funds market consists of around E14.9bn. ...
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Features
Banking on uncertainties
Recently, trying to forecast interest rates has been a pretty tricky task. And there is no reason to expect that things will become easier soon. In a global financial world, interest rates - and this is particularly true of long-term rates - have become dependent on the interplay of so ...
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Features
Private banks making their name in institutional transparency
In Germany, private banks are usually thought of as staid institutions that have served the country’s rich since their beginnings in the 18th century. Serving high net worth individuals - and being every bit as discrete about it as their Swiss peers – explains much of what the likes of ...
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Features
How passion becomes performance
The appetite of Dutch investors for real estate opportunities is growing thanks to excellent, stable long-term returns and changes in regulation. We estimate domestic demand could rise by €10bn over the next few years. On top of this, investors from the USA and Germany are now also taking an interest ...
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Features
Benchmarks bring business risk
Asset managers need to update their fixed income benchmarks each day to be able to judge how their portfolios are behaving in the market. They can lose serious money if the benchmark changes its exposure and their benchmark holdings are not up to date. Benchmark data comes from files supplied ...
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Features
Long/short strategies best
In September 2005, the major hedge fund strategies not only achieved positive returns but also significantly exceeded their long-term performance. Not surprisingly, the long/short equity strategy obtained the best performance in September in the midst of bullish stock markets (eg, +0.69% for the S&P 500), historically low levels of stock ...
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Features
Solidarity between generations
Communication between pension funds to their members is the best way of keeping the collective solidarity between the generations in an ageing population. “Communication and information of the pension funds to their members is paramount,” stated social affairs’ minister Aart Jan de Geus speaking at the ABP Rendez-vous. “It ...
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Features
Beyond 'custody'
Something funny happened to the custody business on the way to the 21st century: ‘custodians’ effectively became ‘financial services providers’. The term ‘custodian’ is still widely used, of course, but custody provision itself is no longer a real differentiator in the market. All of the established providers do custody well, ...
