Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 575
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Features
Alpha overlay: employing active management risk
In simplest terms, alpha overlay is the process of generating excess returns through active management, independent of an underlying asset class. Properly executed, alpha overlay leads to better investment results with no more risk than traditional investment management for the following reasons: q The total return of a portfolio equals ...
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Features
Steering towards convertibles
Back at the start of this decade, convertibles were one of the darlings of the capital markets, producing equity-like returns (double-digit in those days) with considerably less risk. Conventional/traditional fund managers and the convertible arbitrage hedge funds, both enjoyed excellent performance. The happy times are gone and returns in recent ...
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Features
Eking out extra returns
Melissa Brown, managing director and senior portfolio manager of the quantitative equity group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), says there has been a lot of interest among pension funds in many different markets for enhanced indexation products in the last year or so. She cites several reasons for the ...
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Features
Best and worst of both worlds?
For all the benefits enhanced indexing may offer – close index tracking with vital extra points of performance – the depth of its acceptance varies from country to country within Europe. Frits Bosch, director of Netherlands consultancy Bureau Bosch, says enhanced indexing is very popular among pension funds in his ...
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Features
Carried away with alpha
Although enhanced indexing is a strategy for generating limited levels of outperformance, portable alpha is another technique for adding value, and one which has the huge potential advantage in that it can be used to boost returns in an unconnected part of the portfolio. Portable alpha is generated using ...
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Features
Cleaning up with enhanced
Among the UK pension funds that moved into enhanced index equities last year was the £550m (e792m) fund belonging to household cleaning products company Reckitt Benckiser UK. The fund awarded State Street Global Advisors a £50m enhanced indexing equity mandate. The fund’s manager Kevin O’Berg said State Street was chosen ...
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Features
Coping with era of low returns
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – in Finland, Ireland and Slovenia – the same question: ‘How are you meeting the challenge of what looks like a more-than-temporary low in long-term interest rates?’ Here are their answers: Jari Eskelinen is head of fixed income at Ilmarinen, Finland’s ...
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Features
Sorting the sheep from the goats
The Gothenburg-based Andra AP-fonden (AP2), one of the national ‘buffer’ funds of Sweden’s pension system, took the unusual step last year of terminating 16 of its domestic and European equity mandates at one stroke. This bold move was part of a strategic decision to draw a clearer distinction between the ...
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Features
Equities' Jekyll and Hyde
The Dutch asset management house Robeco last year announced that it was launching its first value fund, benchmarked to the MSCI World Value Index and investing solely in undervalued securities. The significance of this is that Robeco has a strong tradition of growth investing. Its Rolinco fund is a pure ...
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Features
Reclaiming what is yours
Are brokerage commissions on securities transactions too high? Pension fund managers in Europe, who believe they are paying too much for transactions, are now more aware that there is something they can do about it. Setting up a commission recapture programme can rebate considerable sums in commission paid. Russell Investment ...
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Features
Business pioneers
There was no fanfare to announce the birth of commission recapture story in the US. It goes back to 1986, to two almost platitudinous observations: A Department of Labor pensions bulletin which commented that broker commissions are an asset of the pension plan and that the administrator of the plan ...
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Features
Stalemate in Prague
The works of Czech 20th century literary giants Franz Kafka, Good Soldier Svejk author Jaroslav Hasek and Vaclav Havel come to mind as one watches the country grapple with the question of pension reform. While the Czech Republic emerged from its kafkaesque period with the fall of the Berlin Wall ...
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Features
Great hope of British pensions
It’s very difficult to find anybody to say a bad thing about Adair Turner. The former head of the industry group the Confederation of British Industry, who now heads the UK’s Pension Commission, has a lot of fans. Turner has a blue-chip background in public policy, academia and the financial ...
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Features
Aiming to go paperless
Swiss pension funds see technology primarily as a way of improving the efficiency of their business. Document imaging systems are enabling some funds to become paperless operations, while others are installing systems that will improve automation, lower the costs of investing and provide quicker, more accurate and comprehensive information. For ...
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Features
RBC ousts SocGen in R&M custody survey
RBC Global Services has knocked Société Générale from the top in a widely-watched survey of global custodians organised by R&M Consultants. RBC, second last year, forced last year’s leader into second place. Mellon Group came in third, from seventh – ousting Pictet, which has slipped to fifth. One of the ...
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Features
Wealth market lure
One of the fastest growing and most profitable segments within financial services, the wealth management marketplace is also highly competitive and fragmented, with independent research showing that no single provider holds more than 2% of the wealth market. Indeed, the top 20 providers globally represent only 12% of financial assets ...
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Special Report
Mark of excellence
In January Brussels-based Independent SRI and CSR advisory and research organisation Ethibel launched its new ‘excellence’ certification in an attempt to appeal directly to institutional investors. This, coming hot on the heels of the new disclosure law on SRI for pension funds, will give a boost to Belgium’s SRI market, ...
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Special Report
Directors behaving badly
PIRC, a UK-based provider of corporate governance, proxy voting and corporate social responsibility investment research has accused the UK government of complacency on the issue of directors’ pay and consultants Deloitte & Touche of being too soft in its report on the subject. PIRC published its latest set of shareholder ...
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Features
Shaping tomorrow's hedge funds
The writer Mark Twain memorably pronounced that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. Today he could be suggesting a similar sentiment about hedge funds. Overall trends suggest hedge funds are here to stay. Consider that the average hedge fund had its 17th consecutive positive year in 2004, showing a ...
