Latest Special Reports – Page 73
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Special Report
Special Report, Fees & Costs: If the price is right
Surveys suggest that investors feel more could be done to make private equity fund terms fairer. But Jennifer Bollen finds that pension funds also recognise that simply squeezing costs may not be the wisest approach.
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Special Report
Special Report, Fees & Costs: Selling fees short
Hedge fund fees have fallen and managers have come around to the idea of negotiating on them, writes Joseph Mariathasan. But structures still need to be more sophisticated.
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Special Report
Special Report, Fees & Costs: Coming together to cut costs
Caroline Liinanki finds Danish pension providers merging and teaming up to cut investment costs as they reach the limits of what they can achieve themselves.
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Special Report
Special Report – Outlook 2015: Giving up freedom for security
Among the many casualties of the financial crisis, perhaps the least heralded but potentially of greatest long-term impact is the modern orthodoxy of central bank independence. Charlotte Moore describes how a new orthodoxy has been written
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Special Report
Active Management: Alpha? Bravo!
One of the interviewees who contributed to this month’s special report recalls meeting someone with an unusual business card. Instead of a run-of-the-mill job title – ‘Managing Director’, say – this person styled himself ‘Alpha Generator’.
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Special Report
Special Report – Emerging markets: Buying opportunity, or structural setback?
Over the past six years, few investment themes have invited such gyrations in sentiment, or generated so much contention, as the emerging markets. After an initial sell-off during the worst of the 2007-08 financial crisis, they clearly outperformed through 2009-11.
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Special Report
Active Management: Feast and famine
The ability to generate alpha might be a skill, but the amount of alpha available from the market is not a constant. Martin Steward asks how we might measure the alpha opportunity and whether investors should vary the risk budget they allocate to active management as a result
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Special Report
Special Report – Emerging markets: Emerging markets in transition
The rise of the emerging world, and especially China, has transformed the global economy over the past generation, while the past decade has transformed investors’ attitudes to its markets. Daniel Ben-Ami assesses where we are in an ongoing transition
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Special Report
Active Management: False economies?
An influential consultancy tasked with finding savings in the UK’s local government pensions scheme has put forward the idea of pooling its funds into passive investment. Brendan Maton looks at the issues and the sector’s response
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Special Report
Special Report - Emerging Markets: On borrowed time?
Warnings about China’s growing debt exposure abound. Beverly Chandler finds market players confident that the system is robust – but emphasising the importance of continued reform and rebalancing
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Special Report
Active Management: The active-versus-active debate
Tracking error has often been used as shorthand for ‘activeness’ in portfolio management. Eric Colson explains the weakness of that approach, and how active share is a much stronger predictor of active performance
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Special Report
Special Report - Emerging Markets: Building the emerging world
Bank disintermediation, and the opportunities it presents, is as strong a theme in emerging infrastructure markets as developed. But Jennifer Bollen finds the similarities may end there
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Special Report
Active Management: Passive skeletons in the active closet
Charlotte Moore tests the limits of quantitative measures of ‘activeness’ in portfolio management, and finds that a good dose of qualitative common sense is a vital part of the manager selection process
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Special Report
Special Report - Emerging Markets: Safety first?
Claims that emerging market investors herded into quality companies in the first half of 2014 raise concerns about troubled times ahead. But as Lynn Strongin Dodds finds, some of that trade has already unwound – and there is a strong counter-argument that investors were, in fact, looking for growth rather than safety
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Special Report
Active Management: Diluting by concentrating
Concentrated portfolios can look like a proxy for high-conviction and high-alpha portfolios. Martin Steward asks if the two things necessarily follow one another
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Special Report
Special Report - Emerging Markets: Fed up with volatility
The Federal Reserve-sparked ‘taper tantrum’ of 2013 revealed how sensitive emerging market currencies could be to interest rates set in the developed world. Caroline Saunders asks whether that volatility told us more about investor sentiment than fiscal fundamentals
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Special Report
Active Management: The portfolio tax
C Thomas Howard argues that active equity fund managers are superior stock pickers but destructive portfolio managers, to the extent that stockpicking skill is completely wasted
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Special Report
Special Report - Emerging Markets: Corporates come of age
A structural advantage is baked into emerging market corporate debt, but exploiting it is dangerous without intense credit work. Caroline Saunders finds a market coming out of childhood but not yet an adult
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Special Report
Active Management: Understanding investment skill
Rather than outcomes-oriented measures, Michael Ervolini argues that to assess active managers’ skills they need to be isolated by comparing their portfolios with alternative, ‘adjusted’ portfolios
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Special Report
Special Report – Emerging markets: At the frontier
Beverly Chandler takes a closer look at some of the companies that make up the frontier markets opportunity, finding a rich mix of local consumer-finance, technology and manufacturing names that offer investors their last chance to buy into a secular growth trend
