Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 372
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Interviews
Across the Gulf… and into the world
Limestone Asset Management launched its first fund, the New Europe Socially Responsible fund, in July 2008. Great timing: it was down 47% by December. But, that was 2.6 percentage points better than its benchmark, the Stoxx EU Enlarged Total Market index. And it made quite a comeback: when it ended 2009 up 83.1%, it left the index trailing by 42 percentage points – outperformance which it has built on since.
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Features
In pole position to become CEE hub
The Warsaw Stock Exchange is proving a favourite with CEE-originated IPOs and emerging CEE countries. Iain Morse reports
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Keeping it real
I’m on my way to Brussels for a meeting. Since my car is in the garage for its annual service I decide to take the train. In the old days it used to take three hours from Amsterdam to Brussels but, since we built the new high-speed rail line, it takes less than two. I say we built it, but actually the Belgians built their own part and finished a lot later than we did.
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Features
In pursuit of a good mix
Just over 88% of this month’s respondents said they invested with managers who use quantitative tools – although we should acknowledge some self-selection bias. Of these, 29% have a specialist quant manager section in their portfolio (and a further 12% only have them in their hedge funds) while 35% have quants working across their entire portfolio.
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Features
Come up, we’re sinking
Feeling conflicted about inflation? If so, take comfort in the fact you are not alone. At the moment, everyone on Planet Earth appears to have ambivalent feelings about the topic. In the space of just two weeks, the industry has generated surveys, studies and reports prophesying that either inflation is about to spread across the planet like The Blob, devouring income and destroying wealth, or that the spectre of deflation is about drag us all back to the 1930s.
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Features
From our perspective: Get reforming
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was compelled to roll a boulder up a hill, continually, only to watch it roll down again and to repeat the procedure again and again.
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Features
A question of faith
“We want to strengthen faith in the second pillar,” the Swiss government frequently points out when defending its plans for structural reform of the Swiss mandatory occupational pension system. But according to the Swiss pension fund association ASIP, it is not individuals’ faith that needs strengthening.
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Features
Changing of the guards at Aba
The sceptre has been handed over – in this case, it is actually a shiny metal cigar case which the first chairman of the Aba, Albrecht Weiß (1890-1961), received from members for his sixtieth birthday in the early years of Aba’s existence.
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Features
Economic situation mirrored by gifts
“Some of my clients are doin’ real good, some not,” said a Texan attendee at this year’s CFA Annual Conference. “But we are proud to be Americans.”
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Features
Thinking the unthinkable
I have lost a lot of money in recent years by listening to the collective wisdom of the Anglo-Saxon high priests of finance on the subject of the euro. They have been universally critical, and frankly ridiculed its chances of survival. As Europe’s sovereign debt crisis has unfolded, the crowing satisfaction from these quarters has been deafening. And yet the euro not only refuses to die, but goes from strength to strength against the dollar. Maybe it is time to turn to an iconoclast to understand what is really going on.
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Features
It’s a target, stupid!
Any regular reader of this column would know that the IASB and the US FASB would hardly dare fail to miss their self-assigned 30 June 2011 deadline for convergence of their respective accounting literature.
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Features
Pragmatism redefines active-passive
With investors losing trillions in the 2007-09 bear market, they are questioning whether active management delivers value. In the process, they are also recognising that active and passive management are but a means to an end. What really matters is the client’s own investment philosophy and the combination of active and passive strategies that is consistent with it.
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Opinion Pieces
Wouter Pelser: CIO Mn Services
“Changes are necessary to ensure the sustainability of private equity investments and commitments by pension funds”
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Features
Scarcity value
Nina Röhrbein spoke with Vincent Ribuot, chief investment officer of UMR Corem, one of France’s few pension funds about working within a life insurance dominated market and the limitations it can cause
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Features
Best practice for the DC payout phase
As DC pension systems grow, it is crucial to ensure scheme members get the best possible value from their savings at the payout stage, finds Gail Moss
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Special Report
Quant: Quant surveyors
As the recent AXA Rosenberg episode revealed, systematic quantitative investment promises the ideal in transparency and integrated risk-management – as long as managers’ corporate governance is equally systematic. Martin Steward reports
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Special Report
Quant: An alternative Aspect
Martin Steward talks to Martin Lueck about why systematic managed futures shone in 2008 while other quantitative strategies sank
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Special Report
Quant: Down but not out
Each crisis delivers useful lessons to the quants world, writes Iain Morse. What did the last one teach us about the optimal conditions and most dangerous risks for model-driven strategies?
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Features
Building Bubbleville?
Emma Cusworth asks if there is enough infrastructure for sale to cope with investor demand – and how to buy it cost-effectively
