The latest
Research

Sovereign Development Funds: designing strategic investment institutions

The hunt for alpha is leading traditional investors toward more innovative strategies and operating models. And, significantly, one potential source of inspiration for long-term investors has come from an unconventional place: the community of sovereign development funds (SDFs). In this paper academics from Stanford University provide readers with analytical frameworks that can assist in the […]
Amanda WhiteOctober 9, 2015
Uncategorised posts

Do long-term mandates produce better results?

About 11 years ago, the Towers Watson’s Thinking Ahead Group came up with the concept of investors appointing managers for 10-year mandates. The consulting arm then started talking to clients about it in 2004/05 and the early mandates have now matured. So did it work? Do longer-term mandates produce outperformance, better behaviour and more security? […]
Amanda WhiteOctober 7, 2015
Research

Capitalising on institutional co-investment platforms

Co-investment is often perceived as referring to institutional investors investing alongside their external asset managers in companies, but increasingly it refers to investment responsibilities being shared among peer investors, as long-term institutional investors are forming co-investment partnerships with the specific objective of deploying capital collaboratively into attractive investment opportunities. These collaborative partnerships seem to be an […]
Amanda WhiteSeptember 30, 2015
Uncategorised posts

GRESB infrastructure launch

A new infrastructure sustainability benchmark has been developed by a group of eight institutional investors, alongside GRESB, to enable systematic evaluation and industry benchmarking of the sustainability performance of their infrastructure assets.   Despite large and widespread allocations by Canadian and Australian pension funds to infrastructure, institutional investors globally do not have large allocations to […]
Amanda WhiteSeptember 23, 2015
Research

State pension funds tilt towards politically-connected stocks

It is well documented that local bias exists in US state pension fund holdings, but now an article in the Journal of Financial Economics (forthcoming) finds evidence not only of local bias, but bias towards politically-connected stocks.  Not only that, but the article finds that political bias is detrimental to fund performance. “Political bias is […]
Amanda WhiteSeptember 18, 2015
Uncategorised posts

Frozen by the entanglement of risk

Equity prices in continental Europe and emerging markets, including China, are below fair value, and present an opportunity for investors, but the ‘entanglement of risk’ in current markets is making Brian Singer, partner and head of dynamical allocation strategies team, William Blair cautious. William Blair typically targets around 10 per cent volatility in its portfolios, […]
Amanda WhiteSeptember 4, 2015
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