The International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), with members from 47 countries responsible for global assets of US$15 trillion, has urged the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) to prioritise investors, not auditors, as the key stakeholders in the setting of global financial reporting standards.
In an exclusive interview, Amanda White, editor of top1000funds.com, talks to the modern portfolio theorist about markets, portfolio rebalancing, Madoff and more.
Government efforts to defend economies from the global downturn – primarily official interest rate cuts and spending packages – could make inflation a significant threat to investors’ portfolios once the crisis has run its course, according to Urs Wietlisbach, executive vice chairman of Partners Group, a CHF24 billion (US$21 billion) alternatives manager.
In a research paper entitled “Tumbling Tower of Babel: Subprime Securitization and the Credit Crisis” in the latest Financial Analysts Journal, Bruce Jacobs argues that highly complex financial instruments, were devised to shift risk from one part of the financial system to another, but the underlying systematic risk remained. And when magnified by huge amounts of leverage, blew up the foundations of the financial system and the economy.
PGGM Investments, the 17th largest institutional investor in the world, as ranked by the Watson Wyatt top 300, has introduced a number of new investment strategies and has plans to significantly increase its in-house investment management this year.
New research reveals many sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have entered the private fund arena and more are planning to invest through private equity funds in the future. According to analysis from the 2009 Preqin Sovereign Wealth Fund Review, which contains investment plans for all SWFs active in the real estate sector, 13 per cent invest only on an indirect basis, while 26 per cent invest only in direct real estate.