All Features articles – Page 261
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Features
Wealth market lure
One of the fastest growing and most profitable segments within financial services, the wealth management marketplace is also highly competitive and fragmented, with independent research showing that no single provider holds more than 2% of the wealth market. Indeed, the top 20 providers globally represent only 12% of financial assets ...
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Features
Only one strategy makes it
As can be seen from table 1, all hedge fund strategies fell short of their long-term average performance in January. Three out of five strategies even posted negative returns. These poor results, which are in sharp contrast to the good performance of Q4 2004, were mainly due to an unfavourable ...
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Features
Turning to private markets
The expectation of continuing low returns over the next decade has left investors scrambling for new approaches to asset allocation, desiring to move beyond the horizons of modern portfolio theory and on to the postmodern universe. One stab at defining a postmodern portfolio theory is presented in a recent report ...
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Features
Number one priority
Vladimir Spidla, the EU’s social affairs commissioner, is optimistic when he thinks ahead to tackling Europe’s looming pension crisis. As former minister of labour and social affairs in the Czech Republic, and subsequently the country’s premier, he has considerable experience of state pension reform – and he refuses to see ...
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Features
Spending risk in the right places
Most pension funds currently use a two-stage process in determining investment strategy. First, they determine their strategic asset allocation (SAA) using asset liability modelling based on the unique liability characteristics of the fund. This creates the allocation to various asset classes known as the policy benchmark. Managers are then appointed ...
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Features
Stalemate in Prague
The works of Czech 20th century literary giants Franz Kafka, Good Soldier Svejk author Jaroslav Hasek and Vaclav Havel come to mind as one watches the country grapple with the question of pension reform. While the Czech Republic emerged from its kafkaesque period with the fall of the Berlin Wall ...
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Features
Reclaiming what is yours
Are brokerage commissions on securities transactions too high? Pension fund managers in Europe, who believe they are paying too much for transactions, are now more aware that there is something they can do about it. Setting up a commission recapture programme can rebate considerable sums in commission paid. Russell Investment ...
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Features
Why absolute returns rule
In a bear market, investment managers pursuing relative returns strategies can offer their clients both good news and bad. The bad news is that they have lost money. The good news is that they have not lost as much money as everyone else. Managers implementing absolute return strategies, however, can ...
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Features
Infrastructure's class act
For pension funds the attraction of investing in infrastructure projects – roads bridges and airports – is that they can provide stable long-term returns and a good match for long-dated liabilities. However the drawback is that few pension funds have the expertise to assess the risk and returns of individual ...
