Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 568
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Features
Politicians play hardball
According to the government official statistics, the ratio of people 65 years old and over in Japan would double from 17.3% in 2000 to 35.7% in 2050. Without substantial reforms, social security pensions would be unsustainable in this century, so the pension reform is currently the biggest political and economical ...
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Features
Lattelekom: one of a kind
First Closed Pension Fund, the pension fund for telecoms and electricity supply workers in Latvia, is the only registered pension fund in the country where the employers are also the pension fund’s shareholders. One of the legal requirements of the Latvia’s reformed pension system is that companies that wish to ...
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Features
Fear of a bubble unfounded
The global hedge fund market has grown at a rate of circa 20% over the last four years, total assets under management reaching an estimated $1trn (e793bn) by year-end 2004. Inflows did slow, however, during the second half of 2004, not least because of the comparatively modest performance experienced in ...
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Features
Absolute returns harder to find?
In theory, hedge funds are all about delivering absolute returns – finding the elusive alpha. Until now, it has been universally accepted that the objective of a hedge fund is to provide positive absolute returns over a medium-term investment horizon irrespective of market environment and traditional market performance. But in ...
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Features
Independence is driving force
When Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) was on the brink of default in 1998, one area of its operations gave no cause for concern - its back office-processing infrastructure. This continued functioning smoothly, and ensured that no payments to creditors were missed and that it did not have to re-state its ...
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Features
Alpha: looking in wrong place?
Institutional investors coping with a low-return environment have recently been pouring unprecedented amounts of capital into hedge funds. The stated motives for doing so vary, but are all rooted in the search for higher expected returns. Some point to the track records of hedge funds during the recent bear market ...
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Features
Too good to be true?
During our research of the hedge fund results, we analysed the 35 hedge fund categories available in the HFR database (www.hedgefund-research.com). The HFR database is one of the largest of its kind and covers approximately 4,150 hedge funds and fund of funds. From this database the HFRI indices are derived. ...
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Features
Core satellite thinking in orbit
Funds of hedge funds are now pension funds’ preferred route into hedge fund investing. Of the €1.2bn invested in hedge funds by Europe’s 50 largest pension funds, €920m is in the hands of funds of hedge funds, according to Boston-based research consultancy Cerulli Associates. One effect of this has been ...
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Features
Fighting fund fraud
Recently, Frankfurt’s public prosecutor began a criminal investigation into a senior employee at Phoenix Kapitaldienst, a German hedge fund manager that has now been told by the financial services regulator (BaFin) to cease trading. The employee is alleged to have siphoned off E700m from the fund. And while those hardest ...
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Features
Getting it right first time
Following the poor returns of the last bear market, institutional investors have recognised the need for diversification in their investment portfolios. Post-Myners, many pension funds are seeking to match their liabilities by investing in alternative asset classes such as hedge funds. The mainstreaming of an industry that has traditionally been ...
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Features
Enemy at the gates
As institutional demand for hedge funds grows, not all providers will be able to meet the emerging standards for the industry, according to a recent report. Those firms that want to thrive in the maturing market will have to adopt new ways of doing business. Last year’s report, ‘Institutional Demand ...
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Features
Crunch year for pension funds
It would be wrong to make hasty conclusions about the value added by alternative investment strategies. Hedge funds should be allowed to show their worth over time. Nonetheless, this year could prove to be a turning point. Consultants Wilshire Associates managing director Howard Yata has suggested that it is too ...
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Features
Case for active style allocation
Although the existing literature seems to concur on the interest of hedge funds as valuable investment alternatives, there seem to be several shortcomings in current industry practice when it comes to fully capitalising on the advantages of including hedge funds in an investor’s asset allocation. So far, the only solution ...
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Features
A match made in heaven
In the aftermath of the bursting of the internet bubble, pension funds were forced to cope with an extremely unfavourable environment. Stock markets were plunging and interest rates were falling to historically low levels. Pension funds in general, and European pension funds in particular, have therefore seen the gap between ...
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Features
The 'undramatising' chairman
Sigbjørn Johnsen says that when he was approached to head a commission intended to coax a consensus on pension reform from Norway’s political parties he saw it as “quite a challenge”, sidestepping phrases like ‘poison chalice’ and ‘herding cats’. “During the 1990s there had been a number of reports on ...
