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Research

The price and performance of wine

Because it’s nearly Christmas, and conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com will close down for the holidays, we thought this research piece was apt. Elroy Dimson, Peter L. Rousseau, and Christophe Spaenjers, have looked at the impact of aging on wine prices and the performance of wine as a long-term investment, using a unique historical database for five long-established Bordeaux […]
Amanda WhiteDecember 18, 2013
Investor Profile

The Finnish line: Varma tackles low interest

The scourge of low interest rates looks likely to be confronting investors for at least a little longer after Washington’s budgetary shenanigans delayed the Federal Reserve’s plans to taper quantitative easing. Over in the more sedate surroundings of Helsinki, this is keeping the pressure on the investment policy of Varma, a €36-billion ($49-billion) Finnish pension […]
Dan BillinghamOctober 30, 2013
Investor Profile

Dutch pension fund defines dynamism

Geraldine Leegwater, ABN AMRO Pensioenfond’s director, talks about her fund’s investment strategy process with a matter-of-factness that possibly belies how far it has moved established ground. While Leegwater sees logic at every vantage point behind the changes that she helped to introduce at the Dutch banking giant’s €18-billion ($24-billion) fund in 2007, she skips from […]
Dan BillinghamJune 12, 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
Investor Profile

Equity enthusiasm grips Finnish state fund

Strong listed equity returns have seen the €15.8-billion ($20.8-billion) Finnish State Pension Fund, VER, increase the asset class to 40.3 per cent of its portfolio, up from 36.4 per cent at the end of 2011. Timo Löyttyniemi, chief executive of VER, explains that the fund made net equity purchases of $74 million in 2012 while […]
Dan BillinghamMay 3, 2013
Asset Classes

Learning from Danish funds’ stable alternative

Despite upturns in equity and bond prices sending 2012 returns into double digits at many large Danish funds, it appears that successfully implementing infrastructure initiatives remains the holy grail of Danish institutional investing. Instead of merely basking in 12.9-per-cent annual returns, Industriens Pension, for instance, used its 2012 results announcement to make a commitment to […]
Dan BillinghamMarch 27, 2013
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