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Home bias in corporate engagement revealed

Investors should take care in selecting corporate engagement firms to ensure the engagement reflects their portfolio holdings, warn academics at Oxford and Maastricht Universities following a new study which reveals a home bias in such activity. As the investment portfolios of large institutional investors become increasingly global, it is particularly important that they carefully select […]
Amanda WhiteApril 24, 2014
Research

Cost shifting and the freezing of corporate pension plans

This paper, which examines the impact of the trend in the US of corporate funds freezing their defined benefit funds and offering defined contribution plans, shows that net of the increase in total DC contributions, firms save 2.7-3.6 per cent of payroll per year, and over a 10-year horizon they save 3.1 per cent of […]
Amanda WhiteApril 24, 2014
Research

The arithmetic of “all-in” investment expenses

In the January/February issue of the Financial Analysts Journal, Jack Bogle, founder and former chief executive of the Vanguard Group, looks at the “all-in” investment expenses including not only expense ratios byt transaction costs, sales loads and cash drag. He highlights, in particular, how damaging these costs can be over the long run, and reaffirms […]
Amanda WhiteApril 23, 2014
Uncategorised posts

The power of benchmarking: GRESB comes of age

Now in its fifth year GRESB, the benchmark that measures the sustainability performance of real estate portfolios, has been influential in changing the sector’s performance and environmental impact. Now Nils Kok, executive director of GRESB and associate professor in finance at Maastricht University, says that infrastructure and private equity assets are ripe for a benchmark […]
Amanda WhiteApril 23, 2014
Research

How to estimate the equity risk premium

Given the importance of equity risk premium, it is surprising how haphazard the estimation of equity risk premiums remains in practice. This paper by Aswath Damodaran at the New York University Stern School of Business examines a number of different approaches to determining the equity risk premium and why different approaches yield different values. It […]
Amanda WhiteApril 16, 2014
Investor Profile

Better beta bets pay off for UTAM

The $6.6 billion University of Toronto Asset Management made some significant active tilts last year resulting in the return on the university’s main portfolio exceeding target return by about 10 per cent. Amanda White spoke to president and chief executive, Bill Moriarty.   Last year was a reasonably easy environment in which to make better […]
Amanda WhiteApril 16, 2014
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