Industriens Pension is one of very few pension funds globally to achieve a positive return in 2008. Kristen Paech talks to chief investment officer, Jan Ostergaard, about what drove the positive return, and the fund’s upcoming merger with two small Danish funds.
The home country bias of US public pension plans is diminishing, with the average allocation to US equities, falling from 42.3 per cent to 38.1 per cent from 2003 to 2008.
Barclays has confirmed it has held discussions with a number of potential buyers over the sale of its profitable exchange-traded funds business, iShares, but says no decision regarding the sale of any assets has been made.
Wilshire will drop Dow Jones as the calculating engine of its indices, and will independently managed its more than 200 indices, including the high-profile Dow Jones Wilshire 5000 index, from April 1.
Pension funds in Europe are rebalancing their portfolios to reflect huge falls in equity markets as the financial crisis forces them to re-evaluate the relevance of their strategic asset allocation in the new market environment.
Good companies to work for are also good companies to invest in, according to new research by Alex Edman of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. In a recent paper, Edmans says there is a direct positive correlation over the long term between employee satisfaction and stock market returns for the companies they work for. In fact, it’s a positive alpha of 4 per cent for his study of 100 companies between 1984 and 2005.