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Swiss referendum: funds’ headache or investor utopia?

The idea of referendums setting the agenda for institutional investors may be a frightening pipe dream in much of the world, but Switzerland’s unique brand of direct democracy is set to revolutionise its funds’ priorities. Swiss funds are due to be anointed as no less than the country’s official guardians against “rip-off” executive salaries. That […]
Sarah RundellApril 10, 2013
Sustainability

Sustainability to create
new drivers of return

Sustainability is constructing a portfolio today on the earnings of the future, according to global head of investment content for Towers Watson, Roger Urwin. Not all performance is born equal, he says, and sustainability is performance with purpose. A cap-weighted portfolio is made up of an earnings stream based on today’s conditions, Urwin explains, with […]
Amanda WhiteMarch 20, 2013
Investor Profile

Belgium’s KBC fund
thrives on LDI

Edwin Meysmans, chief executive of the KBC Pension Fund, sounds extremely relaxed for a man who rises early to avoid Brussels’ clogged roads on the way to the office. Then again, that Meysmans shies away from the madness of commuting crowds should perhaps be no real surprise given that his fund focuses on avoiding being […]
Dan BillinghamMarch 20, 2013
Research

A Framework for Examining Asset Allocation Alpha

Recognising that different asset allocation portfolios are suitable for investors with different needs, Jason Hsu and Omid Shakernia think it is probably too ambitious to establish a unifying structure for determining benchmark asset allocation portfolios. Instead, they propose a framework for thinking about asset allocation alpha, assuming that investors have suitably determined their asset allocation policy portfolio. And the framework is: […]
STAFF WRITERMarch 20, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Pension funds reject EU financial transaction tax

When the European Commission announced plans on February 14 to introduce a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) by the start of 2014, it planted a bomb under Europe’s pension funds. That is not, of course, the view of Algirdas Šemeta (pictured below right), the EU’s commissioner for taxation. He says the proposed tax is “unquestionably fair […]
Richard TomlinsonMarch 8, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Montagnon defines investor engagement

There is scope for European legislation directing asset owners who issue mandates to service providers in Europe to say that they have “thought through” what they want their asset managers to engage with companies on, ICGN conference delegates heard. Peter Montagnon, senior investment adviser of corporate governance at the UK Financial Reporting Council, says there […]
Amanda WhiteMarch 6, 2013
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