Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 735
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Features
What's needed for bond indexation
The reputation of full-blown active portfolio management waned during the 1970s: the reliance on the manager’s gut feeling proved too narrow and insecure a basis to build consistent performance on. Furthermore, the sponsors wanted to exert a stricter risk control on their fund managers. There are several reasons for considering ...
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Features
Governance: for the people but not by the people?
In this month’s Off The Record we broach the subject of pension fund corporate governance (PFG) and ask whether schemes need to get their house in order and if so how can it be done. PFG has been described as asking: “Is the business being done properly?” and, happily, Off ...
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Features
Time to re-examine hedge strategies
We fielded a barrage of calls from the press in the immediate aftermath of September 11’s attacks. Typically, they only needed a quotation or two on what the implications were for hedge funds. However, with about 40 mid-month fund returns to go on, our reply was that hedge fund strategies ...
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Features
The hunt for 'decorrelation'
In a climate of low interest rates and low growth, pension funds are finding it increasingly difficult to earn a reasonable return without an unacceptable increase in risk. A bull market in equities is now a distant memory, and returns from equities and bonds continue to converge. This is creating ...
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Features
Route-maps to transparency
Few of us walk down the street with a blindfold on – too many bollards, other pedestrians, plus the possibility of something unsavoury underfoot. Similarly, transparency provides investors with some comfort of arrival at the expected level of returns, with relatively few stumbles along the way. Conventional long-only funds, operating ...
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Features
Clamour for information
Over the past year hedge funds have boomed. An estimated $8.4bn (€ƒ9.2bn) flooded into the sector in the second quarter of this year, and new alternative investment firms seem to appear on a weekly basis. But as capital flows towards hedge funds, there is a growing demand for greater transparency ...
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Features
Getting to grips with fund of funds managers
Hedge funds seek to make money in markets irrespective of market direction – a laudable aim, particularly in the current uncertain times. Hedge fund managers have the ability to leverage up if they are overwhelmed by opportunities, or go into cash if market conditions are not promising for their particular ...
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Features
Making introductions
Until recently placing money with a hedge fund manager was predominantly done through small independent companies offering what is known as capital raising or contract marketing. In practice hedge funds lacking the resources to fund their own sales teams employ someone independent. Typically that someone might be Arpad Busson running ...
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Features
Outperformance there for the taking
The data below, supplied by Financial Risk Management, the hedge fund specialist, tracks the performance of every type of hedge fund conceivable. The figures on the opposite page are FRM estimates of how the industry has grown in the past seven years and more specifically, which of the four classes ...
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Features
Dipping a toe in the water
As hedge funds continue to win a measure of acceptance from pension funds and other institutional investors, they seem set to change the dynamics of the relationship between consultants and their pension fund clients. Across the board, consultants are finding that their larger, more active clients are expressing curiosity about ...
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Features
Transparency/liquidity needs of alternative investment
In the past, alternative investment strategies (AIS), such as hedge funds and managed futures investing has been dominated by high net worth investors. They were willing to bear the disadvantages of the mostly illiquid and non-transparent but steadily returning investment strategies. Due to the attractive risk-reward characteristics of AIS as ...
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Features
Taking a 'pure' approach to long-short equity
CDC IXIS Asset Management has recently enlarged its investment capabilities through the creation of a ‘Long-Short’ Equity Fund. This hedge fund will, in turn, reinforce company expertise in alternative investment products, targeting an institutional clientele of qualified investors. The acquisition of the American holding company Nvest at the end of ...
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Features
Construction of a customised and diversified portfolio
Hedge funds still present a number of difficult analytical problems for those who wish to integrate them into a traditional approach. To achieve success, it is important to ensure that the objective of the hedge fund allocation is clearly defined at the outset and that expectations regarding return potential and ...
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Features
An 'untraditional' multi-manager approach to alternatives
Transparency? Defined risk management? Short lock-up periods? Fee-sensitive? A fund that can handle critical mass? Do these sound impossible? Think again. These are hedge fund characteristics that investors have been seeking with little or no success in recent years – and with the new problems that lie ahead since the ...
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FeaturesKottmann quits
Felix Kottmann has left leading Swiss consultant Complementa after nine years with the St Gallen-based firm to become an independent consultant to a number of Swiss pension funds and, more directly, the retirement schemes of the troubled Swissair group. Kottmann, who was a member of the executive committee, says: “After ...
