Sort content by
Uncategorised posts

Giving time to investment governance

Roger Urwin, global head of content at Towers Watson and governance specialist, says most organisations don’t spend enough time on it, but transformational change is all about giving time to investment governance. Culture and leadership, for example is so self-evidently important in people organisations and yet it is understated in asset owners, he says. “The soft […]
Amanda WhiteSeptember 20, 2013
Investor Profile

Oregon State Treasury unwinds and adjusts

Oregon State Treasury, which runs $80 billion worth of state investments including the $62-billion Oregon Public Employees Retirement Fund, is preparing the portfolio for a new dawn. John Skjervem, chief investment officer of the treasury’s investment division, sees the speed and extent of the recent sell-off in fixed income as “a shot across the bow” […]
Sarah RundellAugust 14, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Scenario analysis: applicable to anything?

Attempts to apply a formula to asset allocation based on an asset’s historical volatility and relationship with other assets tend to fail when presented with black-swan events. Equities tend to rise along with commodities except when presented with political events such as the price hikes in oil in 1973 that sent equities into free fall. […]
David RowleyJune 5, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Pension funds, where banks no longer go?

There continues to be potential for pension capital appearing where bank lending no longer wants to go. Commentators in the UK and continental Europe have heightened expectations that pension funds will step in to help fill the continent’s bank financing gap. Societe Generale, for instance, recently predicted further “disintermediation” by investors sidestepping banks and looking […]
Dan BillinghamMay 15, 2013
Research

Public pension governance and asset allocation

This paper from Matt Dobra and Bruce Lubich, of the Methodist University in North Carolina and the University of Maryland University College, respectively, analyses the relationship between governance, asset allocation, and risk among state and local government-operated pension systems in the United States of America. It is argued that governance influences investment decisions and risk profiles of public […]
STAFF WRITERApril 24, 2013
Investor Profile

NZ Super: contrarian Kiwis rewrite rules

No one who works at New Zealand Super has a business card that has an asset class attached to it. This simple representation speaks volumes to the investment approach taken by the fund. One could work for the strategy team or the investment analysis team, but the investment structure by which NZ Super invests, such […]
Amanda WhiteApril 17, 2013
<27of32>