All Special Report articles – Page 74
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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: 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Active Management: DIY active
Charlotte Moore looks at the smart beta phenomenon and asks, is it really ‘smart beta’, or rather ‘cheap active’?
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Special Report
Real Assets: Material changes
Is there is a tension at the heart of this month’s special report? On the one hand, we write about markets undergoing significant change. On the other, we deal with issues arising from the pursuit of dependable, boring, long-term cash flows from real assets.
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Special Report
Real Assets: Let's roll
Backwardation is back in commodity futures curves. Martin Steward asks, can investors at last expect to be paid for taking risk in the asset class, or is it a flash in the pan?
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Special Report
Real Assets: Digging a way out of the hole
The misery index reached a new low in Australia this summer as the mining slump continued to bite. But, as Christopher O’Dea reports, a new round of investment is looming as leading emerging-market producers target a bigger share of revenue from their mineral resources and mining companies cut unprofitable projects
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Special Report
Real Assets: Generating returns
Energy and power in Europe is subject to long-term plans to improve the single market, but also buffeted by the short-term vicissitudes of politics, geopolitics and even natural disaster. Daniel Ben-Ami attempts to clarify the investment themes
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Special Report
Real Assets: Real challenges
Frances Hudson outlines just how many obstacles lie between pension funds and investment in European real assets, and calls for further debt and securitisation to open up the market
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Special Report
Real Assets: The sting in the loan tail
Frédéric Blanc-Brude and Majid Hasan present a rigorous – yet implementable – framework for measuring the performance of private infrastructure debt
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Special Report
Real Assets: Learning from the crisis
European commercial real estate debt is a compelling investment opportunity. But Gareck Wilson warns that new entrants must consider the lessons learned during the recentdownturn, as they provide a valuable insight into the potential pitfalls
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Special Report
German Asset Management: The devil’s in the details
Barbara Ottawa looks at the impact of legislative and regulatory changes on the German asset management industry
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Special Report
German Asset Management: Willing but mostly unable
Low yields mean German institutions continue to look at infrastructure. But the opportunities they find are mostly unattractive, says Barbara Ottawa
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Special Report
German Asset Management: Robust in spite of regulatory change
Institutional investors have maintained their confidence in Spezialfonds through the regulatory changes of the past few years and providers can look forward to a good 2015, according to Till Entzian
