In Depth – Page 44
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FeaturesNatural Catastrophe Risk - Cats land on their feet
Catastrophe risk delivered positive returns in 2008 amid rising downside correlation but was not immune from credit exposure, finds Martin Steward
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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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Interviews
Munsters targets pension market
Robeco is boosting its efforts to cater to the Dutch pensions industry. This is not a huge surprise, considering the fact that CEO Roderick Munsters joined the asset manager from pension giant APG, Mariska van der Westen and Liam Kennedy write
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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.
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Features
Pension funds – future farmers
Pirkko Juntunen records the growing popularity of farmland investment in the developing world
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Interviews
Steady hand in a storm
These are interesting times at Copenhagen’s BankInvest. Its 20-strong global equities team was recently reduced to 17 as its head, David Dalgas, resigned, followed by chief portfolio managers Klaus Ingemann Nielsen and Kenneth Graversen. The team still boasts an average of 10 years’ experience, and it maintains that the resignations would not lead directly to changes in its (low turnover, fundamentals-based) global equity portfolios.
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Features
Survival of the fittest
Surviving the financial meltdown has left the strongest names ready to monopolise the wave of public and private sector refinancing. But Richard Hemming still finds that a return to the heady valuations of the pre-crisis unlikely
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InterviewsNew birth for Neuberger
I first met Dik van Lomwel high up on a deserted floor of 25 Bank Street, Canary Wharf, almost exactly one year ago. The employees of Neuberger Berman, bought by Lehman Brothers in 2000, were the only people left, and the place had a melancholy air. “It’s a tragedy, what happened here,” he said. “Lehman was a genuinely nice place to work – how many firms on the Street had senior people who stuck around for so long? But now we have the opportunity to take that forward into the new firm.”
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Features
Untapped potential
Charlotte Adlung makes the case for Africa, warning that poor governance and infrastructure is the main stumbling block to investment
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Features
Multi-asset inflation funds
There are several multi-asset funds mandated to match or beat inflation. Martin Steward asks whether they are anything more than re-packaged absolute return products
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Interviews
The full toolbox
Think Lyxor Asset Management’s brand-defining products and the word ‘barbell’ comes to mind: on one end, Lyxor ETFs and other index products (the cheapest and most passive vehicles); at the other, the market-leading hedge fund managed account platform (the most expensive and active investment strategies).
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Interviews
Modelling talent – and tails
We all know that finding alpha is tough. But managing a portfolio of alpha sources is also trickier than it seems. Many assume that a hedge fund manager’s idiosyncratic risk has a stable relationship with his beta exposures (which is unsatisfactory); and that idiosyncratic risk is normally-distributed and, by definition, non-correlated with other idiosyncratic risks (which is potentially disastrous). Very few have made significant progress beyond these assumptions, but it should come as no surprise that one of those few is fund of hedge funds Caliburn Capital Partners – because building portfolios of alpha is its raison d’être.
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Features
Bucking the trends
Martin Steward examines the big claims that are made for managed futures’ non-correlation with traditional assets, other hedge funds and even each other
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InterviewsIn your style
If ‘manager of managers’ was once the way SEI chose to explain its European business, it has now embraced fiduciary management. Or as Patrick Disney, managing director of SEI’s EMEA institutional business, likes to put it: “When we started here, head office told us to sell what they called a ‘bundled outsourced retirement platform’, which I always thought was a bit of a mouthful. But essentially it was what we now call fiduciary management.”
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FeaturesEnter the global dimension
There is no rule that says emerging market securities are the only – or even the best – source of emerging market exposure. Martin Steward looks at access points closer to home
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Features
Distressed still not de-stressed
As in equity markets, Caroline Hay finds that the big bounce in distressed debt and leveraged loans since the lows of last winter raises as many questions as answers
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Interviews
Concentrating on value
“Believe it or not,” says David Barse, president and CEO of Third Avenue Management, “I think we’re boring. Our portfolio might look interesting, but we never change our style or basic investment philosophy for different markets, or even for different asset classes, market-caps or regions. I once overheard an investor who thought he’d muted the conference phone say, ‘This guy says the same damn thing every time’. I thought that was the greatest compliment.”
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Interviews
A Hamburg asset
The phlegmatic Hamburgers are often compared with the British by dint of their conservative outlook and controlled disposition. Perhaps no wonder that a Hamburg institution like Berenberg Bank should already count a UK local government pension fund among its asset management clients – and that it should be hunting for more such clients outside the German speaking world.
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Interviews
Concentrating on value
“Believe it or not,” says David Barse, president and CEO of Third Avenue Management, “I think we’re boring. Our portfolio might look interesting, but we never change our style or basic investment philosophy for different markets, or even for different asset classes, market-caps or regions.
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Features
Spreading the risk
Diversified growth lives up to its name, covering a diverse range of institutional strategies with diverse potential uses for pension funds, finds Christine Senior. But is the strategy discredited?
