All Securities Services articles – Page 17
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Features
Applying an objective view
One of the reasons that portable alpha has yet to be adopted by pension funds may be that it does not appear to meet their needs. Although it is conceptually attractive, its seems to have no practical application. Ronald Ryan, founder and CEO of US-based Ryan Asset Liability Management believes ...
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Features
Allocation helps double returns
The median Belgian pension fund posted a return of +16.9% over the year 2005, according to Mercer’s Pension Investment Performance Service (PIPS) survey. This figure exceeds the averasge return posted by Belgian Association of Pension Funds of 15.1%. This excellent result is attributable to the strong performance of equity markets. ...
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Features
Alchemy to the rescue?
Portable alpha offers pension funds the investment equivalent of alchemy – transmuting non-performing into performing assets. Using swaps or futures contracts - a process known as equitisation - funds can transfer or ‘port’ the alpha generated by one asset class to other asset classes in their portfolio. In this way, ...
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Features
MiFID on radar screen
In my June 2005 column I wrote that, given the immense scope of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), and the extremely tight April 2007 implementation deadline set by the European commission, “burying one’s head in the sand is patently not an option”. The good news is that in ...
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Features
Limits to help technology can provide
Unsurprisingly, software developers say they can help, and many pension funds are turning to technology providers. The Ilmarinen Mutual Pension Insurance Company in Finland, for example, has implemented a risk budgeting application from New York based provider RiskMetrics. Ilmarinen is using RiskMetric’s application on an application service provider basis. RiskMetrics ...
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Features
Gearing up for global note
Four European institutions have launched an awareness campaign to prepare issuers and their agents for a new legal and holding structure for international debt securities, to be launched in June. The changeover to the new structure is being driven by EU monetary policy. The New Global Note (NGN) is a ...
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Features
Funds end 2005 on strong note
All strategies except for CTA global exceeded their long-term average performance in December. Convertible arbitrage was the only strategy to end the year with a negative cumulative performance. Interestingly, the average performance of the hedge fund industry, proxied by the performance of the Edhec funds of funds index, was almost ...
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Features
Without a ripple
One of the largest pension funds for professionals in the Netherlands, the Doctors Pensions Fund Services (DPFS), recently outsourced the management of its assets from its in-house investment management team to external asset managers. The transfer which involved the movement of €11bn of DPFS assets, was probably the largest transition ...
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Features
The makings of a winner
Year-end prognostications about the evolution of the securities services product set are always an ill-advised enterprise – after all, it was only after the fourth year of commentators touting it as the next big thing that outsourcing finally deigned to take off as ‘predicted’. However, if I were a betting ...
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Features
Telling it how it is
Client reporting has improved greatly in recent years. Fund managers now produce reports that are almost as slick as those of management consultants. Most pension trustees and officers seem to be happier with what they receive today compared with five or 10 years ago. Standards had to be raised. It ...
