All articles by Martin Steward – Page 8
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Features
Back to business
In the April 2010 edition of IPE, I wrote on these pages about my amusement that active managers always think it’s “a great time for active management”. I thought that uncertainties around the euro-zone, China’s economy, forthcoming elections and ‘geopolitical hotspots’ would keep us firmly in a ‘risk-on, risk-off’ world with stubbornly high market correlation.
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Interviews
Alternatives – with pensions DNA
Sometimes a company’s best investments aren’t in businesses or financial markets. When Jack Coates took over management of the pension plan for US forest products firm Weyerhaeuser in 1985, he was returning to full-time work after the company let him pursue a PhD while working part-time in his international treasury position. That investment was to pay off handsomely. His research led him to understand how alternative investments could be relevant to the challenge he saw before the Weyerhaeuser pension plan, which was under-funded and needed to generate higher returns without incurring too much downside volatility.
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Asset Class Reports
Small & Mid-Caps: The 800-pound gorilla
UK exposure – or lack of it – has been decisive in European small and mid-caps. But Martin Steward finds that managers have also had to contend with a difficult ‘risk-on, risk-off’ environment
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News
Dud hedge funds tinker more with historical reported returns – study
Study shows fund managers have revised reported returns as far back as late 1990s.
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News
Hedge fund transparency can hurt returns, increase fees, study shows
Returns fall by 4% annually on average after hedge funds begin reporting.
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News
Martin Steward: Do hedge funds delay reporting results to save face?
Research shows significant correlation of poor performance, delayed reporting across all funds.
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News
Research Affiliates, Citi bring fundamental indexation to global bonds
New series launched on 23 January join existing indices of US investment-grade, high-yield bonds.
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News
Hedge fund performance for 2011 almost as bad as 2008 – EDHEC-Risk
Only one of five strategy groups EDHEC tracks records positive performance over year.
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Asset Class Reports
Emerging Market Equities: Rooting for acorns
Somerset Capital finds a nice selection of tomorrow’s mighty oaks and quality local businesses among emerging small and mid-caps, writes Martin Steward
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Features
Shifting horizons
Timo Loyttyniemi, managing director of Valtion Eläkerahasto (VER), tells Martin Steward why the Finnish buffer fund’s sure touch through the crisis means that the latest change to its targets might just be the last
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Asset Class Reports
Emerging market equities – ‘Quality’ shines through
Martin Steward finds that a significant change in market leadership after 2009 determines who stays at the top of the emerging equity performance tables – and who falls
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Interviews
Geneva conventions
Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch, the 215-year-old Geneva-based banking group, is, of course, a family business. It is just happy coincidence that both the father and brother of Hubert Keller, who co-heads the institutional asset management division, Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM) alongside Thierry Lombard, spent parts of their career with the bank: Keller says he never came across it during his years on the sell-side in London, before joining in 2006.
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Interviews
Bringing the New World to the Old
The third quarter of 2011 was not much fun for Investec Asset Management (Investec AM).
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Features
Another fine mess
Ollie: “Buying that bridge was no mistake. That’s going to be worth a lot of money to us someday.” – Way Out West (1937).
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News
Seek refuge in families as investment skies darken in 2012, pension funds say
Consequences of euro-zone break up "impossible to oversee and hedge" says Dutch fund.
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News
Euro crisis deters investors in European private equity, Coller survey finds
One-fifth of LPs likely to reduce exposure to Europe, finds Coller's Private Equity Barometer.
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Asset Class Reports
Hedge Funds: The governance minefield
Milan’s ECPI assesses the sustainability of hedge funds’ portfolios – and their business models. Martin Steward spoke to CEO Paolo Sardi
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Asset Class Reports
Hedge Funds: A decade on the learning curve
Martin Steward spoke to Finnish pension insurance company Varma about its experiences at the cutting edge of absolute returns
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Asset Class Reports
Hedge Funds: A true alternative
Bainbridge Partners exploits the fact that some hedge fund strategies simply diversify better than others, finds Martin Steward
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Interviews
New entrant to European fiduciary management
Here in Europe, the joke says that British Airways is a pension scheme that owns a few planes. The US equivalent claims that General Motors is a social security fund with a sideline in building Buicks.