All articles by Liam Kennedy – Page 15
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Features
Outsourcing: Avoid the bear traps
In a BBC radio programme last year on business issues, the CEO of Serco, Rupert Soames, said that only “stupid people and lazy people” should not outsource
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Features
Interview: Nigel Stapleton - National Grid UK Pension Scheme
Nigel Stapleton tells Liam Kennedy about the decision this year to dispose of National Grid UK Pension Scheme’s in-house manager Aerion and how the scheme will be managed in future
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Features
What we loosely term ‘hedge funds’
In the early years of the past decade, hedge fund managers dazzled pension funds and their advisers with promises of uncorrelated absolute returns
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Interviews
Strategically speaking: Pictet Asset Management - Starting from scratch
As in other walks of life, things go in and out of fashion in institutional investment. Multi-asset investing is a case in point. Once, a few balanced managers held centre stage in pension fund management in countries like the UK, the Netherlands and Switzerland. Then, in the 1990s and early 2000s, the orthodoxy was for manager diversification using segregated mandates or multi-manager approaches. Faith in the equity market premium was high, as was the thesis espoused by Gary Brinson that asset allocation is the primary driver of portfolio returns, ahead of market timing or stock selection.
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Special Report
Multi-Asset Strategies: Adaptive approaches
Once, institutional investors were happy to set a strategic asset allocation, ahead of market timing and security selection
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Features
Pensions and shareholders
It is remarkable but perhaps unsurprising how little attention institutional investors pay to the governance of the pension funds of investee companies.
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Interviews
Strategically speaking: Principal Global Investors - A glimpse into the future
At least no-one dies as a result of what the investment management industry does or does not do. Unlike technological companies considering drone pizza deliveries or driverless cars, and where real issues of safety and liability may arise, asset management executives only have a set of financial outcomes to consider.
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News
Liam Kennedy on PIMCO: Away from it all
IPE’s editor, Liam Kennedy, looks back to a simpler time for beleaguered asset manager
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Features
Interview: Rolling back the barriers
Liam Kennedy discusses the role of research in institutional investment with Noël Amenc, who stepped down as director of the EDHEC-Risk Institute earlier this year
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Interviews
Strategically speaking: Amundi
Perhaps one of the greatest lessons of the 2007-08 period for institutional investors was about liquidity. Equity markets dropped precipitously and credit spreads widened, while liquidity in safe-haven assets dried up and other instruments became impossible to trade
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Features
Prudence penalty
As we mark seven years since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers this month, the blunt instrument of regulation still hangs over pension funds with respect to European derivatives trading
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Special Report
Tracking Railpen’s switch
Liam Kennedy asks Paul Trickett about the progress the Railpen Investments board is making in changing the way it invests
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Features
Time to focus
Few would see an immediate parallel between the pension fund world and that of commercial aviation. Yet the story of the Douglas Corporation is interesting
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Special Report
Pension Fund Governance: In the eye of the beholder
Good governance is perhaps easier to identify from a distance than it is to put in place. By the very nature of decisions, its benefits for pension funds are easier to assess with the benefit of hindsight
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News
PFZW demands ‘change in mentality’ over carbon emissions approach
Pension fund says its 2020 target to halve carbon emmisions should help create a more sustainable world
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Features
QE: Uncertainty is Queen
It is unsurprising that Dutch pension funds sought to voice their concerns about the effect of QE on their sector before that decision was ratified
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Special Report
What is risk parity?
All theory is grey, dear friend /And green the golden tree of life. The words of Mephistopheles in the first volume of Goethe’s Faust distinguish academia from the attractions and contradictions of the real world
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FeaturesHow we run our money: PFZW
PFZW’s decision to divest from hedge funds was just one element of a comprehensive investment overhaul. Peter Borgdorff and Jan Willem van Oostveen talk about their fund’s renewed strategy
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Special ReportTop 400 Asset Managers 2015: Global assets top €50trn
Once again, IPE surveyed over 400 managers for this year’s study, canvassing end-2014 data in most cases. The results give a broad overview of the global asset management sector, with granular depth on European managers and institutional business
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News
Fixed income holdings at Dutch pension fund PFZW return 43%
Healthcare scheme reports annual result of 15.5%
