All Securities Services articles – Page 23
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Features
Reclaiming what is yours
Are brokerage commissions on securities transactions too high? Pension fund managers in Europe, who believe they are paying too much for transactions, are now more aware that there is something they can do about it. Setting up a commission recapture programme can rebate considerable sums in commission paid. Russell Investment ...
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Features
Spending risk in the right places
Most pension funds currently use a two-stage process in determining investment strategy. First, they determine their strategic asset allocation (SAA) using asset liability modelling based on the unique liability characteristics of the fund. This creates the allocation to various asset classes known as the policy benchmark. Managers are then appointed ...
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Features
Turning to private markets
The expectation of continuing low returns over the next decade has left investors scrambling for new approaches to asset allocation, desiring to move beyond the horizons of modern portfolio theory and on to the postmodern universe. One stab at defining a postmodern portfolio theory is presented in a recent report ...
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Features
Wealth market lure
One of the fastest growing and most profitable segments within financial services, the wealth management marketplace is also highly competitive and fragmented, with independent research showing that no single provider holds more than 2% of the wealth market. Indeed, the top 20 providers globally represent only 12% of financial assets ...
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Features
Where the long-run returns lie
Markets are volatile, with much variation in year-to-year returns: we need long time series to make inferences. The periods we examine must be long enough to incorporate the good, the bad and the indifferent times. In this article we provide an update on long-run returns on stocks, bonds, bills, and ...
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Features
The search for the holy grail
The Capital Asset Pricing Model of financial theory is the root of the Alpha, Beta distinction. This model is shown below: where R is the return from respectively the portfolio and market, alpha and beta the objects of interest and epsilon a residual error term. This is a simple linear ...
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Features
RBC ousts SocGen in R&M custody survey
RBC Global Services has knocked Société Générale from the top in a widely-watched survey of global custodians organised by R&M Consultants. RBC, second last year, forced last year’s leader into second place. Mellon Group came in third, from seventh – ousting Pictet, which has slipped to fifth. One of the ...
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Features
Business pioneers
There was no fanfare to announce the birth of commission recapture story in the US. It goes back to 1986, to two almost platitudinous observations: A Department of Labor pensions bulletin which commented that broker commissions are an asset of the pension plan and that the administrator of the plan ...
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Features
The great alpha hunt
Europe’s pension funds are still reluctant to talk about their strategies in terms of alpha and beta. But there is still a need for pension funds and other large investors to gather all the outperformance that they can. The terms ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ are used to name two investment management ...
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Features
Aiming to go paperless
Swiss pension funds see technology primarily as a way of improving the efficiency of their business. Document imaging systems are enabling some funds to become paperless operations, while others are installing systems that will improve automation, lower the costs of investing and provide quicker, more accurate and comprehensive information. For ...
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Features
Alpha overlay: employing active management risk
In simplest terms, alpha overlay is the process of generating excess returns through active management, independent of an underlying asset class. Properly executed, alpha overlay leads to better investment results with no more risk than traditional investment management for the following reasons: q The total return of a portfolio equals ...
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Features
Hedge funds provide good return for Shell
Stichting Shell Pensioenfonds, the e13.7bn scheme of the oil giant, made a 6.9% return on its hedge fund investments in 2004. “On the hedge fund portfolio a return of almost 7% was achieved,” the scheme says in a statement on its website. Hedge funds, including currency hedging, account for 5.5% ...
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Features
A place for equities
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – the Slovakia, Denmark and Germany – the same question: ‘Equities are still the only asset class that can provide the returns that pension funds need to reduce their deficits – or are they?’ Here are their answers Gabriel Hinzeller is ...
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Features
Custody market on the move
If the past few months are anything to go by, the French securities services market should prove to be one to watch this year. The large domestic players and overseas banks are positioning themselves to take advantage of what they regard as a market of significant potential growth. In December ...
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Features
BNY sets out its stall
There is nothing like starting the New Year with a statement of intent, and the Bank of New York (BNY) has certainly been fast out of the gate. It marked the arrival of 2005 with a clutch of new deals, alliances and acquisitions, including the purchase of Luxembourg retail transfer ...
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Features
Separate alpha from beta
Many of the pension and asset management industry’s leading figures gathered at the Institutional Fund Management conference in Geneva in February to discuss key topics, including how to pursue alpha, the structure of trustee boards, and the best way to ‘work’ your assets. Mark Anson, chief investment officer for the ...
