Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 270
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Annus horribilis?
After a 30-year bond bull market and an arguably easy run for risk parity, in 2013 practitioners suddenly found themselves grappling with significant problems in multiple asset classes. Jennifer Bollen asks four leading managers how they coped with the consequences of last summer’s bonds slump
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Risk parity preferences
The asset allocation strategy can reduce drawdowns, but doesn’t improve long-term returns, argues Andrew Clare. Moreover, those findings are reversed when risk parity is applied within an asset class
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: All change
Tapan Datta asks how investors can begin to address uncertainty in a rising yield environment, in bond portfolios, multi-asset portfolios and LDI strategies
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Keep calm and carry on
Against the broad consensus that rising bond yields have to be bad for bonds, Charlotte Moore finds that being short duration can be punishing if those yields rise more slowly than the market expects
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Absolutely clear
Absolute return bond strategies are understandably attracting a lot of attention, but it is a complex and diverse sector. Joseph Mariathasan looks at some key characteristics
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Rising interest
Chris Redmond asks whether absolute return bonds could play a bigger role in institutional portfolios
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Special Report
Risk and Portfolio Construction: Beefing up the midfield
Investors that need both to limit the volatility of their funding-levels and achieve returns in excess of their liabilities face the twin challenge of low-growth and rock-bottom interest rates. In response, Lynn Strongin Dodds finds them adapting their traditional ‘barbell’ portfolios, albeit slowly, into something more broadly diversified
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Special ReportTop 400: Preventive medicine
Risk departments and portfolio managers don’t speak the same language on risk, argues Ian Webster. An integrated approach is essential
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Special ReportTop 400: A painful legacy
Legacy and outdated technologies are costly and are increasingly attracting the attention of regulators, according to Peter Hill
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Special ReportTop 400: Investing under the influence
Craig Stevenson argues that activist hedge funds strategies can be beneficial for investors but that collaborative approaches are more likely to be effective
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Special ReportTop 400: Smart factor investing
It is important but insufficient to focus on the factor exposure of an index – it is also necessary to optimise the associated risk and return, according to Noël Amenc
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Features
Focus Group: Do you get what you pay for?
Asset management offers poorer value for money than other service industries, if IPE’s latest Focus Group survey results are anything to go by. Eighteen out of 36 respondents feel that it is worse while only 10 feel that it is better. Passive management is considered best in terms of value for money and investor-friendly fee structures, followed by benchmarked long-only active management and smart beta. Private equity and especially hedge funds are seen as the worst offenders.
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Opinion Pieces
TIAA-CREF expands
Six years after taking the helm as president and CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), Roger Ferguson announced the acquisition of Nuveen Investments in April for $6.25bn (€4.5bn), including debt.
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Interviews
An artisan with solutions
Where one still finds asset managers attached to banks, the former tend to be junior partners. Not so at William Blair, whose founder always had an ambition both to finance and invest in small growth companies from day one in 1935.
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Country Report
Switzerland: A home game
An emphasis on domestic investments has left Swiss Pensionskassen with relatively stable returns. Jonathan Williams asks if there are opportunities outside traditional domestic fixed income, equity and real estate
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Features
High frequency problems
High frequency trading (HFT) has scuttled into the limelight this year since the publication of Flash Boys, Michael Lewis’ recent book on the subject. While most people agree that faster, smarter trading is generally good, and that rigged markets are an entirely bad thing, there is by no means agreement where HFT fits in.
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Asset Class Reports
Developed Market Sovereign Bonds: Dollar doldrums
Central banks holding growing foreign exchange reserves around the world will need to find alternatives to US dollar assets. Joseph Mariathasan reports on the best candidates
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investment: The de-risking bear fight
As pension schemes line up to de-risk, Emma Cusworth finds the supply-and-demand dynamic on the UK yield curve is causing aggressive competitive behaviour, distorting bond market valuations
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Features
Growing pensions China style
China launched a massive stimulus pro- gramme in 2008 in its bid to fend off the ravages of the global downturn. While that largely succeeded, there are now long-standing fears of an asset bubble, particularly in property. Growth is predicted to slow this year to its lowest rate since 1990. The country is in the midst of an anti-corruption drive, which is hitting sales of luxury goods, and air quality is still awful.
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Features
Three is a magic number (again)
Last month I wrote about how bond-market valuations are supported by the shape of the yield curve. This month (inspired by a presentation by BNP Paribas’ Kokou Agbo-Bloua I saw recently) we will turn to equities.
