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Investor Profile

Caution, luck and overlays propel Swedish fund

A solvency ratio of 157 per cent is a clear mark of success for a pension fund at a time when so many are battling deficits. Remarkably, Sweden’s SEK90-billion ($14 billion) KPA Pension has gained this funding cushion without fully embracing the range of new asset classes or strategies often touted as the solution to […]
Dan BillinghamJune 19, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Paul Marsh: live with low returns

The London Business School’s emeritus professor of finance Paul Marsh admits that you have to be slightly mad to embark on the kind of research detailed in the latest edition of Global Investment Returns Yearbook. This year Marsh and colleagues Elroy Dimson and Mike Staunton – Marsh describes the three of them, pictured below, as […]
Sarah RundellJune 19, 2013
Investor Profile

Position shift at University of Toronto Asset Management

In organisational terms there isn’t a stone unturned at University of Toronto Asset Management (UTAM). The organisation has a new board, new staff, new risk and reporting systems and has restructured its portfolios, including a new policy portfolio. Where previously the assets were managed in a traditional method, with public market assets and alternatives allocated […]
Amanda WhiteJune 14, 2013
Uncategorised posts

UniSuper defies accepted thinking

Mention any asset class to John Pearce, chief investment officer of Australian superannuation fund UniSuper, and he will doggedly set out the good and bad thinking around it. A common source of his ire is the sight of investors herding around a belief based on a lack of rigorous thinking. Good practice for him involves […]
David RowleyJune 12, 2013
Opinion

Gloom at NAPF attests to investor adventure

One year on and the job of trustees gathered at the United Kingdom’s National Association of Pension Funds, NAPF, annual investment conference in Edinburgh hasn’t got any easier. As the search for optimism in a low-return world endures, the conference seems to be caught in a time loop. Compared to last year, deciding on the […]
Sarah RundellMarch 13, 2013
Research

How to find a safe haven in Europe

MSCI looks at how equity investors can find European stocks that offer some protection against the current volatility buffering markets. Zoltán Nagy and Oleg Ruban examine how the Barra Europe Equity model (EUE3) can be used to help identify stocks that are less sensitive to the unfavorable movements in troubled countries. Using the covariance matrix […]
 August 1, 2012
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