Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 282
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Country Report
Switzerland: Securities lending in focus
Only months before legislation on executive pay and shareholder voting comes into force, Jonathan Williams finds an industry uncertain about whether it will be forced to vote shares, and how new rules will affect securities lending
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Country Report
Nordic Region: Energising alternatives
Rachel Fixsen reports on the search for new investment opportunities within the alternatives sector
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investment: Let's get physical
Are low risk-free rates, a greater willingness to take credit and illiquidity risk in matching portfolios and regulatory changes encouraging investors to turn their backs on derivatives and embrace cash-market assets?
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investment: Mind the gap
Market conditions over the past six years have increased the necessity of managing bond-swap spread risk in LDI strategies.
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investment: Caught short
Pension funds recognise that they are exposed to movements in long-term interest rates when they enter into swap contracts – that is the point of the hedge. But Emma Cusworth draws attention to the importance of volatility in the short-dated floating leg too
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investments: The other 30%
Martin Steward looks at swaptions strategies to cover contingencies around the rump of LDI users’ un-hedged liabilities
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investment: Banks and the linkers market
As government linker issuance shrinks, Harris Gorre argues that banks are in a much better position to issue secured, structured bonds with index-linked yields than corporates are
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Features
Smaller firms, better mousetraps
While innovation can take place in companies of any size, smaller companies sometimes get the edge through fresh thinking and nimble structures. Christopher O’Dea finds that innovation opportunities are abundant both abroad and at home
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Features
Inflated expectations
Investors often assume that inflation protection comes as standard with infrastructure investments. Vivian Nicoli warns that it depends on a number of variables and may come at the price of lower expected nominal returns
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Features
Investing in a slow-growth world
Demographic trends probably mean slower economic growth in the developed world. Katherine Davidson argues that a thorough understanding of demographics will be essential for generating alpha in this environment
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Features
Fuelling risk
Investors need to consider the extent to which their portfolios are exposed to rising climate-change risk, writes Mark Nicholls
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Asset Class Reports
Developed Market Sovereign Bonds: A damaging subjectivity
Credit rating agencies make decisions about sovereign debt issuers based on objective, fundamental data and subjective judgement. Vasileios Gkionakisof UniCreditassesses each factor’s influence on decisions and argues that subjective input has been highly distorting
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Asset Class Reports
Developed Market Sovereign Bonds: 'No attempt to challenge facts'
Moody’s Albert Metz responds to UniCredit’s paper on subjective bias in sovereign bond credit ratings
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Asset Class Reports
Developed Market Sovereign Bonds: 'UniCredit's analysis is flawed'
Standard & Poor’s Moritz Kraemer responds to UniCredit’s paper on subjective bias in sovereign bond credit ratings
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Features
The big picture
The dovishness of the developed markets (DM) central banks continues to be one of the main themes for capital markets.
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Features
Rates of change
Carolyn Tavares argues that the roller-coaster start to 2014, with its disconnect between economic indicators and bond yields, makes the case for holding to strategic, funding level-based de-risking programmes
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Features
Focus Group: Do you get what you pay for?
Asset management offers poorer value for money than other service industries, if IPE’s latest Focus Group survey results are anything to go by.
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Features
Look to the north
In the Netherlands we are sensitive to environmental problems and are aware of our vulnerability as a low-lying nation to rising sea level. After all, you have to if a fifth of your land and a fifth of your people are below sea level.
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Annus horribilis?
After a 30-year bond bull market and an arguably easy run for risk parity, in 2013 practitioners suddenly found themselves grappling with significant problems in multiple asset classes. Jennifer Bollen asks four leading managers how they coped with the consequences of last summer’s bonds slump
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Risk parity preferences
The asset allocation strategy can reduce drawdowns, but doesn’t improve long-term returns, argues Andrew Clare. Moreover, those findings are reversed when risk parity is applied within an asset class
