Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 651
-
Features
Shedding light on funds
The fund market information service, FERI FMI is making further strides in its coverage of cross-border funds distribution. The firm already offers a directory, a growing number of in-depth single market reports and various sales analysis tools. Its latest product, FundFile, is the culmination of many months of research and ...
-
Features
Lose your constraints
Claire Smith A couple of years ago, currency overlay mandates were fairly few and far between. Most pension funds left overseas currency exposures unhedged and those that did seek to manage them sought, in the main, to expunge the risk and accept the resulting profit or loss as simply part ...
-
Features
Delivering the performance
Most investors recognise that currencies have a large impact on the returns of international and global portfolios. By selecting a multi-currency benchmark, the investor, implicitly or explicitly, makes decisions on a set of underlying assets and on the desired level of embedded currency exposure. There is a need to analyse ...
-
Features
A tale of two indices
Are emerging markets currencies a source of pain or pleasure? Looking at MSCI EMF equity index returns, investors might be forgiven for thinking the answer is always ‘pain’. However, the ELMI+ index of currency forward contracts tells a potentially more pleasant story. Given the significant return volatility patterns evident in ...
-
Features
Increase your options
The creation of the euro played a bad trick on currency managers. To begin with, currency managers had strong performance and information ratios, and this was managed with only 20 currencies (which given cross hedging gave a fair opportunity set). A number of research studies suggested that the alphas in ...
-
Features
Most thumbs are up for the directive
This month’s Off The Record looks at the European directive on the activities and supervision of institutions for occupational retirement provision (IORPs) – the pensions directive – and asks what has really been achieved? The directive, recently approved by the Council of Ministers (Ecofin), is a key element of the ...
-
Features
Absolute rules
Chastened by the experience of a three-year bear market in equities, European pension funds are moving from away from traditional benchmarks and relative returns toward ‘liability-driven’ strategies and absolute returns. Certainly this is the picture that alternative asset managers, and some traditional asset managers, are painting. Mark Rosenberg, head of ...
-
Features
Nestle stays ahead of the pack
The €4bn Nestlé pension fund in Switzerland has perhaps gone farthest down the road of any European pension fund in embracing alternative investment in the pursuit of absolute returns. Its current exposure of 15% of assets to hedge funds is probably the largest of any pension fund in the world. ...
-
Features
Come on in, the water's lovely
Alternative investment strategies are registering notably high satisfaction rates in terms of performance among European institutional investors – despite the three-year bear market. The percentage of investors whose returns have so far met or exceeded expectations ranges from 66% for private equity, 79% for hedge fund investment and impressive figures ...
-
Features
New twist to an old idea
After an investor approves an allocation to funds of hedge funds the question arises of which structure to use. For many, the most common form of investment will be through shares in an open-ended company, often set up as a limited liability partnership, or through one of many structured products ...
