Sort content by
Strategy

Pushing smart beta further

The rise of smart beta has just got another boost thanks to a study commissioned by Norway’s ministry of finance for its Government Pension Fund Global. It asked index provider MSCI to look into the feasibility of running smart beta strategies for large portfolios. Very few institutions with the size of GPFG’s $400-billion equity portfolio […]
Sarah RundellMay 29, 2013
Investor Profile

PKA seeks to satisfy its infrastructure hunger

The DKK200-billion ($35-billion) Danish medical professionals pension fund grouping, PKA, wants its government to help satisfy its appetite for investing in major infrastructure projects. Frank Jensen, an analyst on its asset strategy team, says PKA “is eager to get started” on sealing public-private partnerships with the Danish government, but its plans “have not come as […]
Dan BillinghamMarch 15, 2013
Investor Profile

Billion-dollar beef-up at Barclays’ OPAM

If Tony Broccardo, head of Oak Pensions Asset Management, the investment arm of the £23-billion ($35.6-billion) pension fund for employees of London-headquartered bank, Barclays, wasn’t a fund manager he would have been an architect. But Broccardo has applied similar skills of stress testing, planning and making something structurally secure to the return-seeking fund, one of […]
Sarah RundellFebruary 20, 2013
Investor Profile

UMR: growth from government bonds?

“We have to move faster than our competitors,” says the chief executive of French retirement fund Union Mutualiste Retraite, Charles Vaquier. It is a phrase that you can hear uttered by business leaders at all sectors and levels, but one that institutional investors rarely emphasise. In chatting about its investment strategy, it soon becomes apparent […]
Dan BillinghamJanuary 30, 2013