All Features articles – Page 334
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Features
How investors play the markets
With the dire performance of equities over the last few years universally-acknowledged, is it time to consider alternative assets more carefully? This article briefly examines the composition of European property markets, the returns delivered by these investments, and investors’ recent allocation decisions within the property sector. It concludes with a ...
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Features
New twist to an old idea
After an investor approves an allocation to funds of hedge funds the question arises of which structure to use. For many, the most common form of investment will be through shares in an open-ended company, often set up as a limited liability partnership, or through one of many structured products ...
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Features
Increase your options
The creation of the euro played a bad trick on currency managers. To begin with, currency managers had strong performance and information ratios, and this was managed with only 20 currencies (which given cross hedging gave a fair opportunity set). A number of research studies suggested that the alphas in ...
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Features
A tale of two indices
Are emerging markets currencies a source of pain or pleasure? Looking at MSCI EMF equity index returns, investors might be forgiven for thinking the answer is always ‘pain’. However, the ELMI+ index of currency forward contracts tells a potentially more pleasant story. Given the significant return volatility patterns evident in ...
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Features
JP Morgan makes 'master KAG' move
Global custodian JPMorgan Chase has gone into the ‘master KAG’ business in Germany. “Our aim is to strip out the administrative part of the JPMorgan Fleming KAG and decouple the asset management from this,” says Arnulf Manhold, business executive of the US bank’s investor services in Frankfurt. From the beginning ...
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Features
Mainstream or not?
The poor performance of major equity markets in recent years and falling bond yields have encouraged greater focus on so-called ‘alternative assets’. Commercial property investment is often conveniently placed in this category, along with private equity and hedge funds. But is such a classification helpful or meaningful? The term ‘alternative’ ...
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Features
New sense of realism
2003 was the year when pensions came out on to the streets. While it was by no means the first time in countries such as France that the state had been brought to a halt by public outcry over retirement reforms, other countries such as Austria – where thousands paraded ...
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Features
Opportunity or trap?
Fears in the Netherlands that some of the early drafts of the pan-European Pensions Directive – particularly where it mentioned quantitative investment restrictions – could have impacted seriously on Europe’s second largest pension market were allayed by the final adopted version. This took great pains not to restrict any of ...
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Features
A punt on paint
If you’re looking for an example of a sector pension funds should avoid, first impressions suggest fine art is hard to beat. Prices are difficult to predict, pieces can take ages to sell and trading costs and insurance are high. Annual dividends are non-existent, periods move in and out of ...
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Features
PIPE of peace
Few financing structures in recent memory have had the impact of private investments in public equity (PIPEs). Privately negotiated equity or equity-linked securities issued by public companies, PIPEs gained notoriety during the tech boom. Their standing soared and then crashed with the Nasdaq. But these structures have reclaimed some of ...
