All articles by Liam Kennedy
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InterviewsLeapFrog eyes global impact investment opportunities
Impact investing was once a niche concept. “We were seen as the weird people in the corner of the room,” recalls Andy Kuper, the South African founder and CEO of LeapFrog Investments
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Opinion PiecesPreparedness: a new asset class?
Wars are famously costly. Most people would agree that preventing them is infinitely preferable to paying for them.
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Opinion PiecesIs it time to add a new layer to strategic asset allocation?
For years, strategic asset allocation (SAA) has been a cornerstone of investment for pension funds and other institutional investors. Is sustainability a missing ingredient?
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Opinion PiecesThe EU needs a few more AP7s
Europe sure does not have a savings problem – EU household savings amounted to €1.4trn in 2022 versus €840bn in the US. What Europe does have, though, is a glut of bank savings capital that serves as a double bind.
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InterviewsHSBC Asset Management puts team culture at the fore in growth strategy
It’s often said that timing is everything. Nicolas Moreau sees an element of luck in the timing of his appointment to the helm of HSBC Asset Management in September 2019. This gave him a six-month head start in his role as CEO by the time the COVID pandemic arrived in early 2020.
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Opinion PiecesWhy we need to talk about the birthrate
If you live in a big city like London, and if you look hard enough, you are sure to find signs of a falling birthrate.
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Special ReportTop 1000 Pension Funds 2024: Pensions back at a sweet spot
Assets for the leading 1000 European pension funds grew by 8.7% year-on-year, reversing last year’s loss of 6.8%. This brings total assets back up to above their previous high water mark of €9.7trn in 2022’s research exercise. This year’s overall net gain in assets of €775bn is the largest since 2021’s increase of €810bn.
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Opinion PiecesWhy the green transition throws up workforce and pension challenges
Pensions are a hot topic in corporate Germany, where skills shortages and an ageing workforce have led to a war for talent, as well as a renaissance in occupational retirement provision in the fight for workforce skills.
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InterviewsAustralia’s Challenger takes credit and affiliates global
Some 2.5 million Australians are set to retire over the next decade, according to the country’s Treasury. This ageing population has challenged Australia’s A$3.6trn (€2.3trn) superannuation fund sector, and the industry as a whole is pivoting more heavily towards the decumulation phase.
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NewsGlobal active assets drop below 70%
Overall AUM measured across the industry grew 8.6% in 2023, topping €111trn
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Special ReportGeneration of change: asset managers grapple with AI on both sides of the P&L
Data highlights from IPE Top 500 Asset Managers 2024: Global asset management AUM: €111.4trn ($120trn) | Year-on-year increase of 8.6% on the 2023 total of €102.6trn | Global institutional assets: €36trn (2023: €35.1trn) | European institutional assets €11.9trn (2023: €11.5trn)
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InterviewsPGIM looks to grow private credit
Like other managers, PGIM has grown its private assets and alternative credit franchise as clients – both within the group and external – have broadened their allocations across the real assets and alternative credit universes.
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Opinion PiecesEuropean elections: the necessary policy leaps to secure citizens' pensions
This month sees European parliamentary elections and by autumn a new Commission will be in place. The political outcome and the composition of the new EC will influence the future shape of what still looks like quite an aspirational capital markets union (CMU) project.
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Opinion PiecesEnrico Letta’s European 401(k) policy is ambitious but necessary
Enrico Letta’s long-awaited review of the EU single market (Much More than a Market), reached inboxes last month. Among a sweeping range of measures, Letta advocates an ambitious system, akin to the 401(k) in the US, with an EU-wide auto-enrolment long-term savings policy as part of a proposed Savings and Investment Union.
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InterviewsMercer’s Rich Nuzum: soft skills are the hardest in investment governance
Mercer’s recent acquisition of Vanguard’s outsourced chief investment officer (CIO) business and its sale of two administration units points to changes in asset management as firms continue to focus on core activities.
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Opinion PiecesWhy General Electric’s pension management model has finally passed its prime
The late Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric for two decades until 2001, was not only a legendary businessman who grew GE’s market cap 30-fold over his tenure. He also inspired a minor revolution in pension fund management that dates back to the days of mainframe computers and telex machines.
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Opinion PiecesHow effective is your shareholder voting strategy?
F Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”.
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Opinion PiecesCorporate pensions: a close eye on yields in 2024
The final two months of 2023 saw a return to form for global fixed income and equities, with respectable single and double-digit numbers in each case. After a false start in early 2023, at least for a multitude of asset forecasters, bonds were finally back in the final months of last year.
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Opinion PiecesPensions are instrumental in Europe’s unfinished capital markets project
This summer will mark 10 years since Jean-Claude Juncker, former EU Commission president, outlined a vision for a European Capital Markets Union (CMU) – a project both uncompleted and still acutely needed.
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Opinion PiecesWill social partners carve a new role for themselves in pensions?
Social partnership can mean different things in many countries, or very little at all in others. The concept resonates most in continental Europe, where a tripartite framework of social-market capitalism has taken root since the second world war, in which corporatist decision-making involving government, labour and employer voices is entrenched.
