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Asset Classes

New investment pattern in bricks and mortar

Real estate is back in fashion, at least according to a range of recent surveys indicating the growing institutional investor appetite for bricks and mortar. After a tough few years for the industry and with European investors’ priorities changing, the possible renaissance might come with a marked change in investing patterns, though.  More control The […]
Dan BillinghamJune 5, 2013
Investor Profile

Bavarian fund bales on Berlin bonds

Bavaria is known as the most independent-minded of Germany’s regions, and the pension fund of Bavarian chemical multinational, Wacker, has shown definite divergence from the norm by shedding its holdings of German government bonds. It is not just German paper – which has seen yields on 10-year bonds below 2 per cent for more than […]
Dan BillinghamMay 31, 2013
Investor Profile

Diversification key for pioneer of fiduciary management

For someone whose ideas have revolutionised the Dutch pension industry and carried significant international clout, Anton van Nunen strikes a humble tone. Widely credited with pioneering fiduciary management from its infancy, Van Nunen confesses with a chuckle that it is “quite a surprise” that the concept has grown to win over a significant proportion of […]
Dan BillinghamMay 22, 2013
Investor Profile

Deutsche Bank’s carefully engineered fund

You would expect one of the biggest names in global finance to have a sophisticated pension fund, and on that measure the €7-billion ($9.2-billion) contractual trust arrangement (CTA) for Deutsche Bank’s German employees does not disappoint in the slightest. It has carefully engineered a diversified bond-led liability-driven investment (LDI) strategy that is supported by a […]
Dan BillinghamMay 17, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Pension funds, where banks no longer go?

There continues to be potential for pension capital appearing where bank lending no longer wants to go. Commentators in the UK and continental Europe have heightened expectations that pension funds will step in to help fill the continent’s bank financing gap. Societe Generale, for instance, recently predicted further “disintermediation” by investors sidestepping banks and looking […]
Dan BillinghamMay 15, 2013
Investor Profile

Equity enthusiasm grips Finnish state fund

Strong listed equity returns have seen the €15.8-billion ($20.8-billion) Finnish State Pension Fund, VER, increase the asset class to 40.3 per cent of its portfolio, up from 36.4 per cent at the end of 2011. Timo Löyttyniemi, chief executive of VER, explains that the fund made net equity purchases of $74 million in 2012 while […]
Dan BillinghamMay 3, 2013
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