Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 680
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Features
Very singular focus
It’s been three years now since US west coast bond specialist Pimco was bought out by German giant, Allianz, and around a year since the firm began digesting the subsequent tie-up between Allianz and Dresdner. The firm could be forgiven for feeling a little sluggish on the back of such ...
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Features
Search for safer processes
Although investment managers and pension funds previously largely ignored derivatives, recent events in the market are causing them to look at them again. Futures, options and swaps can provide useful instruments to either gain or hedge exposures to help meet performance targets or to manage risks. But derivatives can be ...
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Features
Keeping their edge
Risk is a growing problem that has yet to be properly addressed by many cash investors. At the bottom of the economic cycle, investors would usually be expected to reduce risk, as rising corporate defaults and business failures significantly increase the chances of a loss of capital. But, because of ...
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Features
Enhanced yield strategies
New lows in global short-term interest rates have rendered investing problematic for yield-seeking investors. While declining rates are good for bond prices, they are not very welcome news for the many investors who rely on a stable or growing stream of income. Weak global economic growth, lurching equity markets and ...
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Features
Rising tide of cash
What are the reasons why pension funds might hold cash, and how do consultants suggest their pension fund clients manage these holdings? “The starting point would be an ALM study, to find out if cash has a place in the strategic asset allocation,” says Peter Eerdmans, senior analyst at Watson ...
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Features
All part of the service
In an era when the custodian community is desperately attempting to reinvent itself, the less than glamorous concept of cash management rarely finds itself in the spotlight. The notion of ‘the custodian, as a discernibly unglamorous and low-tech anachronism, is no longer compatible with the ‘image-is-all’ focus of today’s big ...
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Features
Asset to be avoided?
Despite a widespread flight to cash within the international investment community in periods over the last two years, by and large, pension funds have remained loyal to equities markets. With the FTSE All-World index down 38% since November 2000, many investors have seen cash as a safe haven. But while ...
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Features
Hands-off ownership
This month’s Off The Record takes a look at the subject of shareholder activism and the extent to which pension funds should get involved in the affairs of the companies in which they invest. European pension funds hold a significant share of corporate assets. Yet in general they take little ...
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Features
Coping with fixed liabilities and volatile assets
Pension funds, and particularly defined benefit (DB) ones, are basically a bag of liabilities. These obligations have to be matched by both current assets and the future income stream. In the past 50 years, pension funds have benefited successively from high returns on equities, bonds, and equities again. Since September ...
