All articles by Martin Steward – Page 4
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Asset Class Reports
Investment Grade Credit: The last bastion of value
Sluggish growth and subdued corporate confidence persuade sterling and euro credit managers that their asset class remains ‘the best house in a bad neighbourhood’, finds Martin Steward
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Features
Bond managers are worryingly sanguine
ECB president Mario Draghi unveiled his latest measures to arrest disinflation and rouse dormant corporate lending markets in June. Soon afterwards, big records started tumbling.
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Asset Class Reports
Investment Grade Credit: Worth the weight
Smart beta has taken the equities world by storm in the past three years, and practitioners are now turning their attention to bond markets – including credit. Joseph Mariathasan and Martin Steward look at some of the strategies becoming available
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Asset Class Reports
Investment Grade Credit: Electronic liquidity taps open up
A recent paper from Pictet Asset Management paints a picture of fast-diminishing liquidity, but also some innovative responses. Martin Steward reports
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Special Report
Pension Fund Governance: Objectives then implementation
Martin Steward talks to Roger Urwin about the thinking behind Towers Watson’s ‘transformational change’ projects with the world’s leading large institutional investors
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News
Hedge funds should be partners, say AIMA and Barclays
Leading investors focusing on knowledge-sharing, co-investment and customisation, says report
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NewsMulti-asset a 'clear growth opportunity', State Street survey shows
Asset managers focusing on developing existing markets while recognising need to invest in talent, risk management
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News
LPs turn backs on core private equity managers, finds Coller Barometer
Survey suggests many still expect terms to improve, and fear North American funds run with too much debt
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investments: The other 30%
Martin Steward looks at swaptions strategies to cover contingencies around the rump of LDI users’ un-hedged liabilities
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Features
Another eventful summer
The Spanish Treasury joined the UK, Germany, France and Italy as the fifth European sovereign to issue inflation-linked bonds on 13 May, raising €5bn for 10-year paper that was four times oversubscribed.
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Interviews
An artisan with solutions
Where one still finds asset managers attached to banks, the former tend to be junior partners. Not so at William Blair, whose founder always had an ambition both to finance and invest in small growth companies from day one in 1935.
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Features
Liability-Driven Investment: This sprint finish could get brutal
Things seem to have gone pretty well for UK pension schemes during 2013. A combination of rising bond yields and an equity market rally meant that, at the least, funding levels didn’t get any worse, and at best got schemes two or three percentage points closer to the finishing line.
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Rates of change
To a large extent today the question of what to do in portfolio construction is really a question of what to do about interest rates.
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investment: Let's get physical
Are low risk-free rates, a greater willingness to take credit and illiquidity risk in matching portfolios and regulatory changes encouraging investors to turn their backs on derivatives and embrace cash-market assets?
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News
Pension funds recommend diversification in ILS as rates fall
Industry sees no prospect of rates rising from a catastrophic event, but urge investors to look beyond catastrophe risk
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News
TOBAM joins smart beta bonds fray
French manager launches new strategy with €30m in seed capital from existing investor
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NewsImpact of UK annuities reform on long-dated credit 'warrants attention'
Fixed income specialists warn long-term impact of Budget announcement unclear but probably inevitable
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News
East Riding scheme sees advantages in dislocation of credit markets
Local authority pension fund’s head of investment sees window of opportunity extending beyond initial five-year period
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Special Report
Africa: African horizons
Four years ago I attended the launch of a Middle East and North Africa fund. Much was made of the long-term potential of the region’s young population, which seemed to compare so favourably with Europe’s – not to mention Russia’s and large parts of Asia’s. I asked about the risks associated with a preponderance of young men in the event of sluggish growth or job-creation and the portfolio manager politely played them down. Nine months later Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in Tunisia.
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Features
Three is a magic number (again)
Last month I wrote about how bond-market valuations are supported by the shape of the yield curve. This month (inspired by a presentation by BNP Paribas’ Kokou Agbo-Bloua I saw recently) we will turn to equities.
