Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 335
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FeaturesGo with the flows
Dividends really do pay off in emerging markets. Martin Steward asks why, and what the theories tell us about how far investors should tilt towards higher yields.
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Features
If the euro breaks up
Declan O’Sullivan and Lindsay Trapp outline some of the operational challenges that fund managers could face in the event of a break-up of the single currency
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Special Report
As safe as houses
The fixed index-linked cashflows provided by social housing and infrastructure investments can be attractive to investors comfortable with long-term investing, finds Nina Röhrbein
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Asset Class ReportsSovereign Bonds: Curve balls from credit markets
The temptation to look beyond sovereigns for yield is understandable. But Martin Steward finds that the obvious move into top-quality corporates may not be the way to do it
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Asset Class Reports
Sovereign Bonds: Competing premia
Martin Steward finds portfolio managers agreeing on the need to find some spread. But where – in corporate bonds, or peripheral sovereigns?
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Feed the world
It is early September and there’s a chill in the air but the sun is shining. It seems that summer has come late in the Netherlands.
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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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Interviews
Life on planet TOBAM
Quantitative asset managers aren’t particularly noted for prioritising ESG matters.
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Features
Diversification 2.0
With asset class correlations no longer following their historic norms, a new form of diversification focused on risk is emerging, according to Jim McCaughan and Amin Rajan
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Opinion Pieces
Flavien Duval, Risk officer, Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management
Thousands of reports are produced and distributed to hundreds of people who don’t know what they’re supposed to do with them
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Interviews
On the Record: Govvies in decline
What is your strategy in developed market sovereign bonds?
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Features
Squeezing out the last drops
Brendan Maton assesses the favourability of tax-transparent Dublin and Luxembourg pooled funds as a way to avoid being ensnared by US withholding tax
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Features
Investing in solar and student loans
Nina Röhrbein spoke with Hans Wilhelm Korfmacher, managing director at WPV about the pension fund’s highly diversified investment strategy.
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Features
Just who can you trust?
With anti-Europe sentiment running high, bailout fatigue widespread and austerity resentment reaching a fever pitch, the Dutch election of 12 September was widely seen as a bellwether ballot. For a while, the euro-sceptic Socialist Party seemed destined for a landslide win, with polls showing the socialists taking 39 seats in the 150-seat lower house – a 24-seat gain – leaving the conservative VVD of prime minister Mark Rutte in the dust.
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Features
The Draghi put is no turning point for the euro
As I write on 13 September, it’s been a good week for europhiles. On 6 September,Mario Draghi unveiled the ECB’s plan for Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT). The German Constitutional Court ratified the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) on 12 September. And the Dutch electorate favoured two pro-euro parties.
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Features
Soft and hard factors
Daily, at thousands of pension funds, judgements are formed on asset managers. Those managers may largely be hired and fired on the basis of hard numbers, but relationships are assessed (and sustained through hard times or otherwise curtailed) on the basis of a combination of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ factors. Tough economic and market conditions increase the importance of those factors. But which ones do pension funds pay closest attention to?
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Features
No short or decisive war
The essayist Robert Wilson Lynd wrote that “belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions”. The twentieth century conclusively laid to rest the notion that wars between nations would end with the symbolic exchange of border provinces or notional reparations. The economic consequences of the First World War were profound and long lasting, just as the Second World War shaped politics in ways we still see today.
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Features
A long road to a new form of lending
In recent years, a number of asset managers have touted infrastructure’s profile as an asset class. They point out that infrastructure is largely uncorrelated with other asset classes, not to mention that it matches institutional investors’ long-term liabilities perfectly.
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Features
Profits with purpose are still an uphill battle
Not all profits are born equal. This simple view was put forward by Towers Watson’s global head of investment content Roger Urwin as he unveiled the consultancy’s latest research project, Telos, conducted in conjunction with Oxford University.
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Features
Dealing with the financial crisis
The vast majority of sovereign debt will end in effective default – at least that is according to Philippa ‘Pippa’ Malmgren, president of Principalis Asset Management.
