Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 277
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Features
Favour Europe and the euro
Lorenzo Naranjo and Carmen Stefanescu argue that balance of payments and current accounts suggest Europe is strengthening while China weakens
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Features
Focus Group: Feeling deflated
Participants in this month’s Focus Group are quite concerned about disinflationary pressures and the threat of deflation – especially in the euro-zone. Taking the euro-zone as a whole, the ‘core’ euro-zone, and the UK, respondents consider near-zero inflation as ‘inconceivable’ only in the latter. By contrast, four out of the 20 investors polled rate the risk of deflation as ‘high’ in the euro-zone as a whole.
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Asset Class Reports
US Equities: Catching the technology wave
Joseph Mariathasan discusses where US technology companies sit in relation to a once-in-a-generation paradigm shift: the move from desktop to mobile and the cloud
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Asset Class Reports
US Equities: How deep is your value?
Martin Steward looks at three US quality-value strategies, two of which exemplify the difference between ‘deep’ and ‘relative’ value and one whose profile belies any stylistic categorisation
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Asset Class Reports
US Equities: No place like home
Joseph Mariathasan asks if the relative home bias of North American companies might be a shelter from the geopolitical and economic storms rattling international markets
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Asset Class Reports
US Equities: Let’s get together
Joseph Mariathasan looks at trends in corporate activity in the US market
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Interviews
Cautious, Swiss and international
As an institutional manager and provider of institutional-type investment management services to private banks, including within its own group, Pictet Asset Management (PAM) clearly stands apart from the private banking fraternity.
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Special ReportSmart beta: A genuine revolution
Remember 130/30 funds? Most investment journalists do, because they delivered one of those periodic lessons in a major peril of their profession – getting caught up with next hot product
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Special Report
Smart beta: Blurring the lines
The smart-beta or factor revolution is breaking down the boundaries between active and passive management. But Brendan Maton finds this introducing as many new questions as solutions
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Special Report
Smart beta: A match made in smart-beta heaven?
Combining fundamental indexation and minimum variance appears to smooth out the bumpy ride usually associated with harvesting the value-risk premium, finds Charlotte Moore
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Special Report
Smart beta: Collecting the premiums
Martin Steward spoke to Denmark’s PKA about its pioneering approach to extracting risk and return from equity markets – and beyond
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Special Report
Smart beta: Smart beta's Tower of Babel
Smart beta systematically introduces different risks than those contained in the market portfolio – and yet mandates are still generally benchmarked against the market. Brendan Maton writes about the urgent need for more suitable measures of risk and return
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Special Report
Smart beta: A question of governance
Andrew Ang and Alfred Slager shared the stage at a recent seminar. Martin Steward reports on how the debate has moved from the ‘if’ questions to the ‘how’
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Special Report
Smart beta: Every drop of return
Martin Stewardspoke to the Environment Agency Pension Fund, 2013 IPE Award winner for smart beta, about its adoption of diversity weighting, fundamental indexation and low-volatility strategies
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Special ReportThe smart beta family tree
The range of new forms of ‘beta’ can leave investors bewildered. Martin Steward’s illustrative taxonomy offers a flavour of how these solutions might be categorised and how they relate to one another, and lists the key research papers that first described each methodology.
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Country Report
Belgium: Belgian funds on course
Belgium has doubled occupational pension fund participation in the last 10 years and returns were a healthy 6.7% in 2013, writes Iain Morse
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Country Report
Belgium: A DC future: KBC Pensioenfonds
KBC has introduced a DC pension fund for new members starting from the beginning of 2014 and closed its DB fund. The fund is one of Belgium’s largest pension schemes, founded in 1941 with €1.2bn in assets and 15,500 active members.
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Special Report
Europe’s Pension Consultants: Are fees wasted?
After a recent academic paper raised serious questions about consultants’ competence in manager selection, Gail Moss talks to the industry about the nuances of the research and the defence of their practices
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Special Report
Europe’s Pension Consultants: Talking heads
IPE put some questions to pension consultants and fiduciary managers, here is a selection of their views
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Special Report
Europe’s Pension Consultants: Shifting plates
Liam Kennedy questions Chris Ford about ideas, advice and implementation in a changing consulting industry
