All Focus Group articles – Page 3
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Features
Focus Group: Feeling deflated
Participants in this month’s Focus Group are quite concerned about disinflationary pressures and the threat of deflation – especially in the euro-zone. Taking the euro-zone as a whole, the ‘core’ euro-zone, and the UK, respondents consider near-zero inflation as ‘inconceivable’ only in the latter. By contrast, four out of the 20 investors polled rate the risk of deflation as ‘high’ in the euro-zone as a whole.
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Features
Focus Group: Cautious optimism
Of the 34 investors polled for this month’s Focus Group, 56% are confident that the world economy and financial system is over the worst. As a proportion of the poll, this is up on last year, when the split was almost 50/50. The surprise, perhaps, is that the swing has not been stronger, given the stellar performance in 2013 of developed-market equities.
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Features
Focus Group: Shareholder voting policy
Thirteen of the 18 investors polled for this month’s Focus Group have shareholder voting policies – and of those that do not, just one is working on such a policy.
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Features
Focus Group: Resistant to change?
Less than half of the 19 investors polled for this month’s Off The Record survey (eight respondents) allocate to hedge fund strategies.
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Features
Focus Group: Equities falling out of favour
The average equity allocation in the portfolios of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey is around 36.7%, down from just over 40% 10 years ago.
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Features
Focus Group: The real thing
Just under half of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey expect their allocation to real assets to increase a little over the next five years. On average, respondents currently invest 24.4% of their fund in real assets – although some investors have a more expansive definition for the term than others. One fund included the 5% it has in private equity, for example; two others included their listed equities; and two even included bonds, without specifying whether these were inflation-indexed.
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Features
Focus Group: Pressure to find a balance
A majority of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey (60%) use LDI techniques to manage their liabilities. Of these, almost half (seven respondents) thought yields from core government bonds and rates on interest-rate swaps could fall even lower than they did in the summer of 2012.
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Features
Focus Group: Service providers or trusted advisers?
Perhaps it should come as no surprise that all 28 respondents to this month’s Off The Record poll thought the client relations skills of the overall asset management industry were merely good to mediocre – but when it came to the manager they have known best or longest, almost all rated them good to excellent.
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Features
Unease over debt and politics
This month’s Off The Record poll reveals that, while some of the fear has been taken out of the euro-zone situation over recent months, no-one feels certain we are past the worst. Asked to identify the biggest risk to the integrity of the zone, a few cited threats such as ...
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Features
Grappling with private equity
Of the 24 respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey that hold private equity investments, 15 were happy with the number of individual fund commitments that their fund had in its portfolio. Of these, four felt they needed to re-balance the strategies. A Danish fund commented: “Investment costs have ...
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Features
Currency war? What war?
Two-thirds of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey do not believe there was a genuine ‘currency war’ on, with about half of these believing it to be all media hype.
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Features
Focus Group: Shaky confidence returns
Some 43% of those taking part in this month’s Off The Record survey were quite confident that the world economy and financial system are now over the worst.
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Features
Focus Group: Political considerations
Two-thirds of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey have, over the past five years, taken action in their investments to try to adapt to a preponderance of political risk in financial markets.
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Features
Focus Group: Communicating risk to trustees
Over 90% of participants in this month’s Off The Record survey said their fund had an investment committee, while 38% also had a risk committee. Around 28% additionally had other committee structures, such as for pensions, audit, and administration.
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Features
Rise of CTAs and global macro
Of the 59% 0f respondents to this month’s survey that do invest in hedge funds, 10 invest via funds of funds and 10 invest direct – confirming a trend to combine the two approaches to the market. One UK fund confirmed that it was moving from funds of funds to ...
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Features
Focus Group: A crisis of confidence and trust
Half of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey thought that quantitative easing (QE) and outright monetary transactions (OMT) were effective as emergency monetary policy measures
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Features
Focus Group: Bad to the bone
Almost three-quarters of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey felt recent events, such as LIBOR-manipulation and mis-selling, point to major problems with the culture of banking.
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Features
Focus Group: Still life in the ‘supercycle’
Eighteen respondents (56%) to this month’s Off The Record survey had commodities or commodity futures in their portfolio.
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Features
Risky business
Some 43% of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey had investments that were not benchmarked. Of those respondents that did, it is no surprise that illiquid and non-listed assets dominated – real estate, infrastructure and private equity – along with some absolute return and cash mandates.
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Features
Focus Group: Risky business
Twenty-seven respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey used liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies. On average, 63% of their liability risk was currently hedged.
