All Features articles – Page 249
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Features
Tracking smarter money
Now that asset managers have access to financial information resources like FactSet the hurdle to entry into the mainstream use of quant techniques has been lowered. Managers who want to gain or maintain a competitive advantage must focus on areas with a higher entry hurdle, where the information is less ...
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Features
Widening the net
Unpasteurised cheeses are becoming ever more popular in the UK on account of their more complex flavour – a flavour which becomes still more complex as the cheese matures. The sophistication of tastes is presenting new challenges - and thereby opportunities - to many a UK cheese manufacturer. Especially the ...
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Features
Story of pensions success
Croatia’s second pillar pension funds have proved to be a spectacular success since their foundation in 2002, despite being launched against an unstable political background as the country grappled with recovery from the 1991-95 Yugoslav war and political parties pursued confrontation rather than consensus. The reform also paved the way ...
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Features
Rocking the pillars
The World Bank has signalled a shift in its position on the pension issue. With the publication in February of ‘Old age income support in the 21st Century’, an international prospective on pension systems and reform it indicated that it had taken on board some of the criticisms that have ...
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Features
Right time, right place
Raiffeisen Capital Management (RCM), the asset manager of the Raiffeisen banking group, is an Austrian firm with European ambitions and e30bn in assets under management. It has a dominant position in Austria, where it has 22% share of the overall market and 26% of institutional business, and a growing share ...
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Features
On the right track
The pension fund of the Dutch rail system, Spoorwegpensioenfonds (SPF) is the oldest and now one of the largest pension funds in the Netherlands, with some 77,000 members and assets of €10bn. The non-compulsory, industry-wide fund, which celebrates its 160th anniversary this year, was one of the first funds in ...
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Features
Absolute returns harder to find?
In theory, hedge funds are all about delivering absolute returns – finding the elusive alpha. Until now, it has been universally accepted that the objective of a hedge fund is to provide positive absolute returns over a medium-term investment horizon irrespective of market environment and traditional market performance. But in ...
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Features
Case for active style allocation
Although the existing literature seems to concur on the interest of hedge funds as valuable investment alternatives, there seem to be several shortcomings in current industry practice when it comes to fully capitalising on the advantages of including hedge funds in an investor’s asset allocation. So far, the only solution ...
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Features
Alpha: looking in wrong place?
Institutional investors coping with a low-return environment have recently been pouring unprecedented amounts of capital into hedge funds. The stated motives for doing so vary, but are all rooted in the search for higher expected returns. Some point to the track records of hedge funds during the recent bear market ...
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Features
Pensions reforms back on track
Few countries need pension reforms as badly as Russia. The majority of the country’s 40m pensioners live in dire poverty, and this population is increasing as a result of increasing longevity. Pensions reforms, however, have had a mixed response, from both the public and providers. Their complexity has raised questions ...
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Features
Over a barrel
The world has become accustomed to increased crude oil prices in recent years. But while most oil analysts ascribe the major price upsets to factors inherent to the crude oil market, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has put part of the blame on the speculative role of pension ...
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Features
How BASF has it taped
Let us rewind to the year 1888. In that year BASF was one of the first companies in Germany to set up a Pensionskasse. Fast-forward to the present: Today it caters for BASF’s German employees with a funding of around E4.5bn, and forms part of a network of schemes with ...
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Features
Belgium starts to warm up
As a nation, Belgium comes way down the list of private equity investors in Europe. In 2003, the latest year for which figures are available, private equity investments equalled only 0.1% of gross domestic product, according to the European Venture Capital Association. That was less than half the European average ...
