All Long Term Matters articles – Page 4
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Human capital dilemma
Institutional investors are being asked to take sides in corporate/union disputes, the latest being National Express and Teamsters
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Can investors be part of the solution to Brazil's crises?
Investors in Brazil have been largerly absent from the separate crises over water and corruption shaking the country
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Dear Finance Minister
In March 2015, leading investment consultants gathered at the residence of a leading UK financier to discuss dangerous climate risk. This is a hypothetical letter from one of the participants.
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term matters: Of herds and bubbles
There is much talk in the investment community of the long term and fundamentals. Yet behaviour remains rather short term in practice
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Taxing questions
Tax wasn’t a material issue for ESG – let alone traditional – investors a few years ago, but now it is. So how did this happen and what does it tell us about other issues which are currently dismissed as non-material?
-
Opinion Pieces
Every lesson helps
Here are 12 things arising from the Tesco accounting debacle that pension funds could deploy which would help prevent, or at least mitigate, similar implosions.
-
Opinion Pieces
Crony capitalism
The public gets it. Academics and financial analysts get it. In fact, many experts say it is the most important governance and democracy issue of our time. So why do investors have so little to say about political donations and the corporate capture of politics?
-
Opinion Pieces
Learning disabilities
Who would invest in a sector that has lagged the Stoxx 600 by 1.1% in overall growth and by 0.3% in EPS growth for the last 19 years on an annual basis?
-
Opinion Pieces
Is divesting working?
OK, it doesn’t work very well. We’re still on track for runaway climate change, according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Authority.
-
Opinion Pieces
M&A medicine
The debate about Pfizer’s proposed takeover of the UK’s AstraZeneca – which should have resolved itself by the time you read this – reminds us that there are some big unanswered questions relating to institutional investors and M&A activity.
-
Opinion Pieces
Body of evidence
When I was training to be a doctor, the advent of evidence-based medicine (EBM) was a major step forward.
-
Opinion Pieces
ESG lacks something
No, I haven’t had a damascene conversion to become an ESG critic. Rather, my argument is that the ESG (environment, social and governance) community needs to add another ‘E’, for economics.
-
Opinion Pieces
The twain shall meet
The figures speak for themselves when it comes to the development of defined contribution (DC) pension assets. Defined benefit (DB) pensions accounted for over 60% of the total assets in Towers Watson’s annual Global Pension Asset Study 10 years ago but that share is now 53% and falling; the annual growth of DC assets was 8.8% over the past 10 years compared with 5% for DB assets.
-
Opinion Pieces
Lessons from Davos
Who would have thought that Davos would take over from the dormant Occupy movement on the issue on ‘inequality’? Or that five years after the crisis the financial sector would still be top of the WEF Global Risks register?
-
Opinion Pieces
Are they taking my job?
Had anyone told me that McKinsey and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) would challenge the institutional investment system as I’ve been doing, I’d have laughed. But when tipping points are reached, paradigm change can happen fast. Coming hard on the heels of the Kay review and the UK fiduciary duty review, two insiders have acknowledged that institutional investor behaviour is harming business performance and society.
-
Opinion Pieces
Opposing oil divestment
Divestment from oil companies to stop climate change will not work. But by being largely disinterested, the investment industry has given clients and NGOs nowhere else to go. So how should investors push back against divestment?
-
Opinion Pieces
ESG 2.0 – let’s get serious
The responsible investment community has done something very important. It has raised awareness that institutional investors who define their job as beating the peer group benchmark are being irresponsible – stewardship responsibilities for the long term are now on the agenda. But the current trading-oriented model of investment is impossible to align with these responsibilities.
-
Opinion Pieces
PE’s planetary alignment
‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ describes gender differences in cognition. Having attended three major private equity events – PEI Responsible Investment Forum (for ESG-friendly PE), Coller Institute Private Equity 2013 Symposium (for mainstream PE) and PEI Operating Partners Forum 2013 (for portfolio companies) – we propose transposing ...
-
Opinion Pieces
Whose risk counts?
Paul Woolley – a successful academic economist, regulator and fund manager – gave sustainability investors a direct challenge at the recent Responsible Investor conference.
-
Opinion Pieces
Dimon’s status quo risks
No one says star gazing is easy but let’s be brave. JP Morgan Chase (JPM) is a preventable surprise in the making.
