In Depth – Page 45
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Interviews
On an ambitious journey
The name ‘AXA’ was chosen in the early 1980s, so the story goes, because it can be easily and uniformly pronounced in any language, and, as far as anyone knows, it also doesn’t mean anything rude anywhere around the world. But slick branding can’t make you good at everything, of course.
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Features
One step forward, two steps back
Given the problems in Europe, distressed debt would appear to be all the rage, writes Joel Kranc. But waiting out events might prove to be even more lucrative
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Features
The real safe haven?
High yield is priced so keenly it would take a euro-zone break-up to really threaten investors, finds Anthony Harrington
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Features
Back to the real economy
Government and bank debt is the problem, not the solution, writes Christine Johnson. If you want safety, follow the money – to large corporates
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Interviews
Alternatives – with pensions DNA
Sometimes a company’s best investments aren’t in businesses or financial markets. When Jack Coates took over management of the pension plan for US forest products firm Weyerhaeuser in 1985, he was returning to full-time work after the company let him pursue a PhD while working part-time in his international treasury position. That investment was to pay off handsomely. His research led him to understand how alternative investments could be relevant to the challenge he saw before the Weyerhaeuser pension plan, which was under-funded and needed to generate higher returns without incurring too much downside volatility.
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Features
Going global for inflation
In Europe, it seems pricey to buy inflation, whether for liability-hedging or simple wealth preservation. Brendan Maton looks further afield
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Features
An historic opportunity
Regulatory pressure, changes to the market structure and an ongoing de-leveraging process make the financial sector compelling for bondholders, argue Robert Montague and Satish Pulle
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Interviews
Geneva conventions
Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch, the 215-year-old Geneva-based banking group, is, of course, a family business. It is just happy coincidence that both the father and brother of Hubert Keller, who co-heads the institutional asset management division, Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM) alongside Thierry Lombard, spent parts of their career with the bank: Keller says he never came across it during his years on the sell-side in London, before joining in 2006.
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Interviews
Bringing the New World to the Old
The third quarter of 2011 was not much fun for Investec Asset Management (Investec AM).
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Features
Cash in the attic
Squeezing a return out of cash can expose funds to unexpected risk. But Charlotte Moore suggests that using it for strategic optionality removes the need to take risk in the search for yield
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Interviews
Strategic agility
Nordic private equity house CapMan does not make things easy on itself. Its mission statement: “To be the best-performing European private equity firm”.
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Interviews
New entrant to European fiduciary management
Here in Europe, the joke says that British Airways is a pension scheme that owns a few planes. The US equivalent claims that General Motors is a social security fund with a sideline in building Buicks.
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Features
(Really) high yields
Dramatic repricing has opened up opportunities in high-yield, finds Lynn Strongin Dodds
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Interviews
Clear signals in the fog
When IPE first spoke with Ian Heslop about the post-crisis refinements that Old Mutual Asset Managers (OMAM) had made to its quantitative equity models, it was June of 2011. The sun was shining – literally, and (for quants) metaphorically, too.
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Features
Still as safe as houses?
Denmark’s mortgage bonds have never defaulted – in 215 years. Rachel Fixsen reports on why questions are suddenly being asked
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Interviews
Happy in its own little world
With new funds springing up or existing ones growing, the winds seem to be blowing favourably again for cleantech investments.
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Interviews
Focus and flexibility
Few can claim to have been investing in emerging markets for 130 years. But Martin Currie & Co was helping to finance the North American railroads in the 1880s, when the US occupied the spot that China occupies today. That pioneering spirit lived on; it made its first Japanese investments in the 1960s, opened an office and a fund in China in 1997, and rolled out its first hedge fund – long/short Japan – in 2000. A new strategy partnership with Singapore’s APS Asset Management looks set to be a leading independent A-share active equity business.
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Features
The long and short of it
With the deep-value trade over and macroeconomic volatility abundant, Lynn Strongin Dodds assesses the case for absolute return in credit
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Interviews
Initiative focused
State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) has learnt lessons from the past. Losses incurred during 2007-08 by five of its fixed income funds, which were marketed as conservative strategies, led to lawsuits filed by among others the Houston Police Officers’ Pensions System and Prudential Financial.
