All IPE articles in November 2001 (Magazine)
View all stories from this issue.
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Features
Short-lived solvency
As part of a new fiscal plan, the Spanish government has announced modifications that aim to promote the country’s underdeveloped funded pensions system. The new measures, including fiscal reductions for companies and more flexible limits to contributions for pension plans, have been welcomed in the corporate and financial communities. “The ...
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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
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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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 ...
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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
Living with increased volatility
Over the past 10 years, capital markets have been subject to a series of shocks. In the foreign exchange markets, the prime examples have been the ejection of sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the collapse of a number of the Asian currencies in 1997. In the bond ...
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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
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
Stop indexing: go passive
It is nearly four decades since Bill Sharpe’s Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). We think it is time to take his work seriously and to change many of our cherished beliefs on portfolio structures. There are two striking conclusions. First, we should exclude all references to asset categories such as ...
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Features
Ready to go pro-cyclical
Global equity market return has now been negative for six quarters in a row, except for the first quarter of 2001. This means that the downturn is almost as long as the 1973–74 oil crisis. The effects of the attacks are very difficult to quantify but growth forecasts are reduced ...
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Features
'Simple fundamental philoshophy'
One of the largest but most unknown firms in the investment world is BlackRock, admits its founder and chief executive Larry Fink. “This is not something we planned for, but we just do not believe in ‘self-marketing’. Our whole mandate is to achieve acceptance through performance and client service.” The ...
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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
Gescartera probe fuels political row
What began as an investigation into the activities of Spanish brokerage company Gescartera has developed into a political crisis for the ruling Partido Popular (PP), and a worldwide search for embezzled funds and ‘black money’ accounts Casualties already include the head off the stock market’s regulatory body and a senior ...
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Features
Eyes fixed on reserve fund
This year has seen a slowdown in the creation of new pension funds in Portugal. The awaited reform of the social security system, the real key to the future development of the industry, has not yet materialised, and although the debate is still alive, so far no major steps have ...
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Features
Ready for European tour?
The announcement by the €552m VKG-CPM Belgian pension fund for doctors, dentists and pharmacists that it had established a new healthcare sector pension fund, ‘Amonis’, with potential membership of 250,000 employees across the country, was not only one of the most significant in the Belgian pension market in recent times, ...
