In Depth – Page 41

  • Features

    Boarding time approaches

    June 2012 (Magazine)

    For liquid investors with an eye on the medium term, investing in the maritime industry could be just the ticket, argues Marcel C. Saucy

  • Features

    Restless continent

    June 2012 (Magazine)

    Africa is set for a busy year of elections – and it has already experienced an old-fashioned coup. Charlotte Adlung assesses the political risks behind the investment opportunities

  • Features

    Smooth operators

    June 2012 (Magazine)

    The Swiss are taking pains to make their banks as risk-free as possible to ensure client loyalty, finds Iain Morse

  • Interviews

    De-leveraging, beautiful and beastly

    June 2012 (Magazine)

    Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha is famed as the world’s largest hedge fund, earning $13.8bn for investors in 2011 alone. But today, over coffee in a luxury London hotel, the focus for Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer of the Connecticut-based firm, is on a beta strategy called ‘risk parity’.

  • Interviews

    On avoiding hostages to fortune

    June 2012 (Magazine)

    There is no disputing Northern Trust’s powerhouse status in global custody and asset servicing in Europe. In the UK alone, a big custody contract was renewed by the London Borough of Hillingdon’s pension scheme in 2012, and, along with several similar renewals, it added €19.5bn in custody assets for 13 new clients during 2011, including major names such as the Lothian Pension Fund, the Lancashire County Council Pension Scheme and the Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London (SAUL). Transition management mandates were won from the likes of the Northumberland County Council and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea pension funds. Losses – such as the East Riding Pension Fund custody mandate that went to State Street – were rare exceptions in the effort to remain a go-to service provider.

  • Features

    Private assets on public markets

    May 2012 (Magazine)

    Listed private equity struggles to drum up interest even from private investors. Anthony Harrington asks, does it have any role to play in institutional portfolios?

  • Features

    Small is beautiful

    May 2012 (Magazine)

    Smaller companies make up the vast majority of the economy, are better-aligned with shareholders, more entrepreneurial – and not necessarily young and inexperienced. No wonder they both outperform and diversify large-caps, writes Nick Hamilton

  • Features

    Political decisions for investors

    May 2012 (Magazine)

    Helene Williamson outlines the complex process of assessing political risk in emerging markets and warns investors they ignore this risk their peril

  • Interviews

    Making an impact on SMEs

    May 2012 (Magazine)

    The conviction articulated on its website – ‘We believe that market forces and entrepreneurship can be harnessed to do well by doing good’ – hardly distinguishes the £275m (€333m) London-based sustainable growth investor Bridges Ventures (Bridges) from other investors in the environmental, social or governance (ESG) domain. But its investment strategy certainly does.

  • Interviews

    A new titan in Asian equities

    May 2012 (Magazine)

    The timing could have been better. Just days before the finalisation of the merger of the Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co and Chuo Mitsui Asset Trust & Banking Co, the latter was fined by Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC) for an insider trading breach that took place nearly two years ago.

  • Features

    Low beta, high benefits

    April 2012 (Magazine)

    The significant outperformance of apparently ‘low-risk’ stocks over time is a well-known ‘anomaly’ in investment theory. Martin Steward asks, if it is an anomaly, won’t it eventually be corrected?

  • Features

    A nugget of risk reduction

    April 2012 (Magazine)

    Marcus Grubb summarises a new study of the diversification benefits that gold offers to a euro-based institutional investor

  • In defence of pro-cyclicality
    Features

    In defence of pro-cyclicality

    April 2012 (Magazine)

    Adina Grigoriu asks, is pro-cyclical risk management necessarily a cost – or can it be an unexploited source of performance?

  • Interviews

    Surviving the seven years of famine

    April 2012 (Magazine)

    Rogge Global Partners operates out of one of London’s most spectacular offices, the neo-Gothic Sion Hall, its traders toiling beneath the gaze of stained-glass images of heroes of the English Reformation.

  • Features

    One year later

    March 2012 (Magazine)

    The Tohoku earthquake of March 2011 was one of the most devastating natural disasters of recent times. Martin Steward asks if it has changed the way investors look at their Japanese equity portfolios

  • Features

    Keiretsu culture

    March 2012 (Magazine)

    Japan’s corporate governance culture has been moving, albeit slowly, towards Western models. But Nina Röhrbein finds that the Olympus scandal could lead to some push-back

  • Interviews

    On an ambitious journey

    March 2012 (Magazine)

    The name ‘AXA’ was chosen in the early 1980s, so the story goes, because it can be easily and uniformly pronounced in any language, and, as far as anyone knows, it also doesn’t mean anything rude anywhere around the world. But slick branding can’t make you good at everything, of course.

  • Features

    One step forward, two steps back

    February 2012 (Magazine)

    Given the problems in Europe, distressed debt would appear to be all the rage, writes Joel Kranc. But waiting out events might prove to be even more lucrative

  • Features

    The real safe haven?

    February 2012 (Magazine)

    High yield is priced so keenly it would take a euro-zone break-up to really threaten investors, finds Anthony Harrington

  • Features

    Back to the real economy

    February 2012 (Magazine)

    Government and bank debt is the problem, not the solution, writes Christine Johnson. If you want safety, follow the money – to large corporates