With the ability to make investments of up to £50 million ($80.4 million) without board oversight, the London Pensions Fund Authority (LPFA) has boosted its exposure to emerging markets while also buying global infrastructure, commodities and solar energy. Chief executive Mike Taylor told Simon Mumme about some further opportunities, such as Brazilian agriculture, the fund
Now that automatic enrolment has become the centrepiece of UK pension reform, decent retirement incomes should no longer be exclusive to company veterans and the well-off.
While regulatory reforms can introduce improvements to complex investment products such as standardisation, Dr Arjuna Sittampalam, Research Associate with EDHEC-Risk Institute and Editor, Investment Management Review, argues an increased suppression of complexity could be unfortunate, particularly as pension funds begin to take to derivatives in a big way.
Investment appetite among European institutions rebounded in 2009, with Mercer Investment Consulting identifying a surge in clients’ demands for new global fixed income, global equity and specialist credit exposures. Andy Barber, global head of manager research at Mercer, tells Simon Mumme about the investment themes driving these searches, and the evident decline of the ‘home
Bigger appetites for absolute return strategies, new attitudes to risk and governance, and the onset of major regulation – these were the forces for change identified in Watson Wyatt’s 2008 study, Defining Moments. But the social fallout from the financial crisis has sparked another phenomenon that could heavily impact institutional investors, according to Tim Hodgson
The $27.3 billion Tredje AP-Fonden (AP3) of Sweden has instituted a search for active fixed income managers to run portfolios of US, European and UK credit.
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