Investment Strategies – Page 15
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Special Report
Smart Beta: Re-balance of payments
Market-cap equity indices have come in for stiff criticism over recent years, but Martin Steward finds their shortcomings are nothing compared with the bond market. A new breed of indices attempts to address their worst failings
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Interviews
De-leveraging, beautiful and beastly
Bridgewater’s Pure Alpha is famed as the world’s largest hedge fund, earning $13.8bn for investors in 2011 alone. But today, over coffee in a luxury London hotel, the focus for Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer of the Connecticut-based firm, is on a beta strategy called ‘risk parity’.
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Features
Avoiding the shadows
Iain Morse reports on the growing use of real-time collateral management
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Interviews
On avoiding hostages to fortune
There is no disputing Northern Trust’s powerhouse status in global custody and asset servicing in Europe. In the UK alone, a big custody contract was renewed by the London Borough of Hillingdon’s pension scheme in 2012, and, along with several similar renewals, it added €19.5bn in custody assets for 13 new clients during 2011, including major names such as the Lothian Pension Fund, the Lancashire County Council Pension Scheme and the Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London (SAUL). Transition management mandates were won from the likes of the Northumberland County Council and Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea pension funds. Losses – such as the East Riding Pension Fund custody mandate that went to State Street – were rare exceptions in the effort to remain a go-to service provider.
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Features
Boarding time approaches
For liquid investors with an eye on the medium term, investing in the maritime industry could be just the ticket, argues Marcel C. Saucy
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Asset Class Reports
Private Equity: Pioneering spirit
In frontier markets, private equity is often the first source of investment for business. However, as Joseph Mariathasan reports, there are pitfalls as well as the opportunities
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Asset Class Reports
Private Equity: Harvesting illiquidity premia
Private equity outperforms public equity – not least thanks to its illiquidity premium. But, as Cyril Demaria writes, using public equity as a benchmark for valuation can make it difficult to harvest this benefit
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Asset Class Reports
Private Equity: Escaping the crowd
Overview Supplying the mid-market Joseph Mariathasan finds a changing environment altering how established managers approach the market – which in turn alters the market itself
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Asset Class Reports
Private Equity: ‘If you can’t meet demand, you’re finished’
Martin Steward meets Silk Invest, feeding Africa one investment at a time
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Features
Private assets on public markets
Listed private equity struggles to drum up interest even from private investors. Anthony Harrington asks, does it have any role to play in institutional portfolios?
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Special Report
Moves in microfinance
Despite suffering some negative perceptions, the asset class is cleaning up its act and gaining new fans, says Nina Röhrbein
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Interviews
Making an impact on SMEs
The conviction articulated on its website – ‘We believe that market forces and entrepreneurship can be harnessed to do well by doing good’ – hardly distinguishes the £275m (€333m) London-based sustainable growth investor Bridges Ventures (Bridges) from other investors in the environmental, social or governance (ESG) domain. But its investment strategy certainly does.
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Asset Class Reports
Private Equity: Let’s work together
Private equity co-investment looks like a great deal for limited partners. But Martin Steward finds that it is demanding enough to require intermediation, even for large investors withestablished general partner networks
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Features
Political decisions for investors
Helene Williamson outlines the complex process of assessing political risk in emerging markets and warns investors they ignore this risk their peril
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Asset Class Reports
Private Equity: For the lack of a Bloomberg
Private equity remains opaque, but regulation will improve transparency. However, argues Cyril Demaria, that could result in consolidation and rising fees for investors
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Features
Small is beautiful
Smaller companies make up the vast majority of the economy, are better-aligned with shareholders, more entrepreneurial – and not necessarily young and inexperienced. No wonder they both outperform and diversify large-caps, writes Nick Hamilton
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Interviews
A new titan in Asian equities
The timing could have been better. Just days before the finalisation of the merger of the Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co and Chuo Mitsui Asset Trust & Banking Co, the latter was fined by Japan’s Securities and Exchange Surveillance Commission (SESC) for an insider trading breach that took place nearly two years ago.
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Features
All change
Iain Morse finds that the creation of a single, mandatory central settlement depositary later this year will have wide-ranging effects on the trading and settlement of securities in Russia
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Features
A nugget of risk reduction
Marcus Grubb summarises a new study of the diversification benefits that gold offers to a euro-based institutional investor
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Special Report
Food for thought
Nina Röhrbein asks what pressure investors can put on food companies to improve their products and address health issues
