Investment Strategies – Page 29
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Special Report
Securities Services: Liabilities into assets
As large, maturing pension schemes turn to liability-driven investing, Benjie Fraser talks to Martin Steward about the opportunities available to custodians that can draw on broader institutional capacity and expertise
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Special Report
Securities Services: Testing times ahead
With consolidation and growth expected in the European custody markets in the coming years, Luxembourg could be one of the biggest beneficiaries, says Iain Morse
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Special Report
Securities Services: A matter of choice
Andrew Baker says the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive could restrict choice and impose some unreasonable burdens on depositaries
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Special Report
Securities Services: Risk and return
The credit crisis has focused the minds of lenders on getting their risk-reward parameters right, as Susan Pike explains
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Special ReportBP, investors’ blind spot
Has the need for dividends compromised the green credentials of pension funds when it comes to oil companies such as BP? Nina Röhrbein reports
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Asset Class Reports
Emerging Market Debt: Portfolio focus: Fringe benefits
As an asset class, emerging market debt (EMD) is generating a real buzz among asset managers and investors. It may take some time, but pension fund allocations are expected to rise, given the mismatch between current allocations to the emerging markets and their increasing economic importance. Insight Investment head of EMD, Colm McDonagh, says: “Less than 1% of global pension fund assets are in emerging markets; it should be significantly higher. Within 10 years, emerging market countries will have 50% of global GDP.”
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Asset Class ReportsEmerging market debt – A reconfiguring world
High credit spreads and strong currency performance are just two reasons why emerging debt markets are set to eclipse the performance of G7 countries in the coming year, writes Peter Marber
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Special Report
Garbage in, garbage out
Like all investment data and ratings, environmental, social and governance indicators need to be scrubbed clean and carefully analysed, writes Adam Seitchik
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Interviews
From growth to profitability
Arjun Divecha likes to talk personal hygiene. In particular he likes to tell a story about HengAn International, China’s leading producer of sanitary towels and diapers.
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Features
Passports to success
Fernand Schoppig presents insights into asset managers’ strategies for international marketing from FS Associates’ survey ‘Cross-Border Distribution of Asset Management Services 2010’
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Special Report
Fiduciary/Delegation: Your faithful friend?
Liam Kennedy assesses the European market for fiduciary management. Where the earliest fiduciary contracts outsourced almost the entire value chain of pension management, more recent agreements centre on different levels of delegation, and managers are having to learn new tricks
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Special Report
Fiduciary/Delegation: Topiary
Failed by the fund of funds industry, investors are beginning to plant, nurture and clip their hedge funds themselves, finds Martin Steward
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Special Report
Fiduciary/Delegation: Competing advice
The obvious objection to pension funds bringing hedge fund selection in-house is the strain it puts on resources in the service of such a small part of the overall risk budget. The counter-argument, put by Andre Konstantinow, head of manager selection at the Barclays UK Retirement Fund, is that hedge ...
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Special ReportFiduciary/Delegation: Still life in the FoFs model
While relationships with funds of funds are evolving, Katharina Lichtner outlines the costs and dangers of going it alone in private equity
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Asset Class ReportsCredit: New world order
Joseph Mariathasan finds corporate bond managers coping with the new realities around benchmarking, ‘risk-free’ rates and agency credit ratings
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Asset Class Reports
Credit: Graded ‘could do better’
Martin Steward talks to Standard & Poor’s about what exactly it means to rate a security AAA
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Asset Class Reports
Credit: Real yields for real money
Martin Steward speaks to Babson Capital Europe, which argues that the time has come for European pension funds to allocate seriously to the loans market
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Asset Class Reports
Credit: Qualities for the long term
Madeline Forrester makes the case for investing in high yield as part of a longer-term strategy
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Special Report
Fiduciary/Delegation: Hedge fund beta: a cheap core portfolio?
If the trend is towards core-satellite hedge fund portfolios, what does that mean for resource budgeting? It is tempting to see this as a passive-active portfolio – why would an investor not wish to maximise her budget for the active part and minimise her budget for idiosyncratic risk, illiquidity risk and, of course, costs, in the passive part? This is the argument behind ‘hedge fund beta’ – investable indices, ETFs, super-diversified funds of funds and quantitative, hedge fund replicators.
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Interviews
Beware falling knives
The Mudrick Capital Management project was set in motion in 2008 to take advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – “the largest supply of over-leveraged corporations ever seen” combined with the most severe recession since the 1930s “has kicked off a distressed cycle that will be unprecedented in terms of length and depth of supply”, its website declares.
