Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 584
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Features
Risk budgeting takes centre stage
How does ‘new balanced’ asset management work in practice? Allianz Global Investors’ (AGI) product Global Vision provides one example. Global Vision is the brainchild of Lee Thomas, a managing director of PIMCO and the head of its international portfolio. Thomas got the idea when PIMCO, 70% owned by Allianz, absorbed ...
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Features
Europe's high yield comes of age
Last year was good for European high yield – not just in terms of investment returns, but issuance volumes last year were at record levels, passing those achieved in the now notorious Year 2000 at the height of the telecom bubble. Although the period between the spring of 2000 through ...
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Features
Working until you drop
The touchy subject of retirement age. Should people be compelled to retire at a certain age, and what age should that be? Many European states and employers impose official or mandatory retirement ages at which employees are expected to retire. However, these age limits were set at times when life ...
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Special Report
Benchmarking behaviour
Investors are crying out for a single objective way to measure and compare corporate governance practices across broad range of companies in the index, explains Stanley Dubiel senior vice president and director at Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), which together with FTSE launched the new joint corporate governance index (CGI) series ...
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Special Report
The price of respect
If companies fail to understand how human rights issues could impact investment opportunities they and their shareholders will pay the price. This was the message that Howard Carter, chief executive of F&C gave at the recent Business and Human Rights Seminar. Recent issues around the world have posed questions for ...
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Features
From acorns to sturdy trees
The strategic development of AXA Investment Managers, the e340bn investment arm of the AXA Group, typifies the kind of move from balanced to specialist asset management that has gained momentum over the past decade. In 2003 AXA IM decided to re-focus its business on areas where it felt it had ...
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Features
The greatest of these is MBS
“US mortgage-backed securities have the highest Sharpe ratios of all US asset classes, stock or bond. Bonds in general have a higher Sharpe ratio than stocks going back ten years. But even among bonds mortgage-backed securities have had the highest Sharpe ratios.This fact surprises many people. “Conventional wisdom states that ...
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Features
Smoothing over the differences
Since the beginning of this year all companies listed on stock exchanges within the EU have been required to prepare their consolidated financial statements in accordance with the new International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Companies listed on exchanges outside the EU have a further year before the requirement applies to ...
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Features
Taking no prisoners
When the star of the cult Sixties TV show The Prisoner was not being pursued around the Welsh coastline by amorphous white blobs or grappling manfully with yet another convoluted, would-be existential conceit, Patrick McGoohan could be found securing his place in the glittering pantheon of pop culture with the ...
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Features
SSGA launches pooled fund liability matching for schemes
State Street Global Advisors has launched a flexible pooled vehicle, which lets schemes match future liabilities within different inflation environments. SSGA said its new ‘Pooled Asset Liability Matching Solution’ (PALMS) “enables pension funds to match their projected future liabilities within different inflation environments using a flexible and cost-effective pooled vehicle”. ...
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Features
Hedge funds in the mainstream
Hedge funds have now moved into the mainstream with 32% of European institutions now using them, Greenwich Associates says. “Among European institutions, the proportion using hedge funds jumped to 32% in 2004 from 23% a year earlier,” the Connecticut-based consulting firm sasy. It added that US institutional use climbed to ...
