In Depth – Page 45
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Features
Political decisions for investors
Helene Williamson outlines the complex process of assessing political risk in emerging markets and warns investors they ignore this risk their peril
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Interviews
Making an impact on SMEs
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.
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Interviews
A new titan in Asian equities
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.
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Features
Low beta, high benefits
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?
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Features
A nugget of risk reduction
Marcus Grubb summarises a new study of the diversification benefits that gold offers to a euro-based institutional investor
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FeaturesIn defence of pro-cyclicality
Adina Grigoriu asks, is pro-cyclical risk management necessarily a cost – or can it be an unexploited source of performance?
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Interviews
Surviving the seven years of famine
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.
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Features
One year later
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
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Features
Keiretsu culture
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
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Interviews
On an ambitious journey
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.
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Features
One step forward, two steps back
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
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Features
The real safe haven?
High yield is priced so keenly it would take a euro-zone break-up to really threaten investors, finds Anthony Harrington
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Features
Back to the real economy
Government and bank debt is the problem, not the solution, writes Christine Johnson. If you want safety, follow the money – to large corporates
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Interviews
Alternatives – with pensions DNA
Sometimes a company’s best investments aren’t in businesses or financial markets. When Jack Coates took over management of the pension plan for US forest products firm Weyerhaeuser in 1985, he was returning to full-time work after the company let him pursue a PhD while working part-time in his international treasury position. That investment was to pay off handsomely. His research led him to understand how alternative investments could be relevant to the challenge he saw before the Weyerhaeuser pension plan, which was under-funded and needed to generate higher returns without incurring too much downside volatility.
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Features
Going global for inflation
In Europe, it seems pricey to buy inflation, whether for liability-hedging or simple wealth preservation. Brendan Maton looks further afield
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Features
An historic opportunity
Regulatory pressure, changes to the market structure and an ongoing de-leveraging process make the financial sector compelling for bondholders, argue Robert Montague and Satish Pulle
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Interviews
Geneva conventions
Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch, the 215-year-old Geneva-based banking group, is, of course, a family business. It is just happy coincidence that both the father and brother of Hubert Keller, who co-heads the institutional asset management division, Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM) alongside Thierry Lombard, spent parts of their career with the bank: Keller says he never came across it during his years on the sell-side in London, before joining in 2006.
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Interviews
Bringing the New World to the Old
The third quarter of 2011 was not much fun for Investec Asset Management (Investec AM).
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Features
Cash in the attic
Squeezing a return out of cash can expose funds to unexpected risk. But Charlotte Moore suggests that using it for strategic optionality removes the need to take risk in the search for yield
