All Features articles – Page 251
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Features
Mushrooming demand
Demand for currency management and overlay has ballooned in the last two years as investors embrace it as an alterative source of return. As currency managers tune their services to the needs of pension funds and other institutions, the future of the sector is beginning to take shape. Currency overlay ...
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Features
Learn to manage demand side
Since the beginning of the last decade, the difference in macro-economic performance between Europe and the US has been striking. With the exception of the very end of the 1990s, the Euro-zone countries have had sub-par growth, while in the US growth has remained solid, except between 2000-2001. If one ...
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Features
A step in the right direction
Northern Trust Global Investments (NTGI), the asset management arm of Chicago-based banking company Northern Trust, is among the top three players worldwide in three fields: securities lending - which it regards as part of its investment management business - passive management, and manager of managers. Of NTGI’s e466bn in assets ...
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Features
Independence is driving force
When Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) was on the brink of default in 1998, one area of its operations gave no cause for concern - its back office-processing infrastructure. This continued functioning smoothly, and ensured that no payments to creditors were missed and that it did not have to re-state its ...
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Features
Effect of reforms uncertain
Recent reforms of investment and pension laws in Italy could open up the market to foreign investment managers and custodians. Italy has been a relatively closed shop for securities services providers and a strong universal banking model has enabled the local banks to dominate provision of both custody and asset ...
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Features
Volatility at the short end
Although the European Central Bank (ECB) may not have changed official interest rates since the half-point cut back in June 2003, that does not mean to imply interest rates at the short end have also remained unchanged. TheECB may be controlling and setting the very short-term rate - via its ...
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Features
Enemy at the gates
As institutional demand for hedge funds grows, not all providers will be able to meet the emerging standards for the industry, according to a recent report. Those firms that want to thrive in the maturing market will have to adopt new ways of doing business. Last year’s report, ‘Institutional Demand ...
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Features
Ensuring good performance
Performance and risk analysis have gone a long way since the dark ages of investment, when returns were measured in rather raw form, while risk was hardly measured at all. These days, pension plan trustees are enlightened by slick performance reports, including hundreds of statistics, thoroughly calculated and well-presented with ...
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Features
The eternal triangle
The pension problem is simple: a question of assets, liabilities and the difference between them - an asset or liability. Risk is mostly simply and generally defined as the rate of change of an object. The rate of change of an asset’s value, its risk, we know by the term ...
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Features
Risk exposure stalls growth
As can be seen from table 1, the main hedge fund strategies all fell short of their long-term average performance in March. Three of the five strategies, namely convertible arbitrage, long/short equity and event driven, even posted negative returns. These disappointing returns might be explained by the exposure of hedge ...
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Features
Oil for extra virgin wheels
Italy’s new defined contribution (DC) schemes have got off to a slow start. Having become operational only a few years ago, assets under management of the industry-specific contrattuali - literally contractual, or closed - schemes were just short of E6bn at the end of September, with just over a million ...
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Features
Securing the family fortune
Barbara von Gartzen of Family Estate Services (FES) in Luxembourg says: “Attitudes towards wealth management have changed significantly. Until a few years ago, most high net worth individuals have been looking after their wealth mainly by themselves.” Nowadays, managing the wealth of a family has become a highly complex and ...
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Features
Fighting fund fraud
Recently, Frankfurt’s public prosecutor began a criminal investigation into a senior employee at Phoenix Kapitaldienst, a German hedge fund manager that has now been told by the financial services regulator (BaFin) to cease trading. The employee is alleged to have siphoned off E700m from the fund. And while those hardest ...
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Features
Getting it right first time
Following the poor returns of the last bear market, institutional investors have recognised the need for diversification in their investment portfolios. Post-Myners, many pension funds are seeking to match their liabilities by investing in alternative asset classes such as hedge funds. The mainstreaming of an industry that has traditionally been ...
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Features
The global transformation
We are in the midst of a revolution in the organisation of global markets and the competitiveness of corporate form and functions. This has enormous implications for financial markets and their interest in defined benefit (DB) pension liabilities. Employer-sponsored funded supplementary pensions were a success story in Anglo-American economies and ...
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Features
Too good to be true?
During our research of the hedge fund results, we analysed the 35 hedge fund categories available in the HFR database (www.hedgefund-research.com). The HFR database is one of the largest of its kind and covers approximately 4,150 hedge funds and fund of funds. From this database the HFRI indices are derived. ...
