Financial Times Mandate articles from April 2008

Financial Times Mandate archives from April 2008

From the editor: Risk management back on the agenda.(Editorial)
April 1, 2008... Byline: Henry Smith A recent survey by Mercer, the investment consultants, reveals that European pension funds are paying greater attention to risk management. It's an encouraging trend, especially in this time of market turbulence. It is...

News & Comment: Strategies, products & mandates - Calpers leads rallying cry for US treasuries.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Nat Mankelow Calpers, the largest pension fund in the US by assets, insists that US treasuries remain an attractive and safe proposition for investors, despite the high profile announcement from South Korea's $220bn (138bn,...

News & Comment: Investment strategies - Legg Mason finds light at the end of tunnel.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Martin Steward The worst is over and financial markets are set to recover. Such was the bullish optimism expressed at the Legg Mason Group's annual investment conference, held recently in London. Mark Fetting, the $998bn...

News & Comment: The consulting room - Demanding transparency.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Aymeric Poizot The liquidity crisis that started in July 2007 in the US real estate market has triggered a "flight to quality" phenomenon, which has led investors to move their capital to "safer" assets. Small and mid-cap stocks...

News & Comment: The Bender agenda - Doubts arise over integration.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Yuri Bender - Editor-in-chief The single, integrated, banking structure - trail-blazed by leading US bank Citigroup after its purchase of Sandy Weill's Travelers insurance business ten years ago - has taken something of a battering...

News & Comment: Market analysis - Europe - Corporate bonds look good value.
April 1, 2008... Corporate bonds, particularly the higher quality investment grade ones, look cheap on any historical measure. In the UK, investment grade financial sector bonds are trading at levels that indicate that one in five banks will go bust in the...

News & Comment: Market analysis - North America - Recovery may not be far away.
April 1, 2008... The US economy has now been slowing for some time and there are mounting fears of a recession. However, we believe that by the end of 2008 the economy could already be on course for a recovery, as the lagged effects of the recent action by the...

News & Comment: Market analysis - South America - Growth remains strong.
April 1, 2008... Despite current market volatility, economic growth across Latin America is still strong and the region remains attractive for investors across the globe. Both public and private sectors have very ungeared balance sheets, while the region as a...

News & Comment: Market analysis - Asia Pacific - Asian property will attract investors.
April 1, 2008... As concerns continue to grow around the US economy and European property market returns slow, Asian property markets will increasingly be seen as an alternative destination for western investors. Although the region's export- oriented nature...

Features & interviews: The chief - Allianz man defends long-only track record.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Henry Smith Pension funds with long-term liabilities should not dismiss index-benchmarked equity investing as yesterday's news. According to Andreas Utermann, global CIO of RCM, the $168bn (109bn) active equity arm of Allianz...

Features & interviews: Scheme spotlight - Managing off-balance sheet exposure.(Pension Protection Fund )
April 1, 2008... Byline: Martin Steward "I'm not really sure people understood what was really being created when the PPF was set up in April 2005," Partha Dasgupta, chief executive officer of the Pension Protection Fund, told delegates at the recent...

Cover story: Middle Eastern investors - Gulf wealth flows into emerging markets.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Peter Guest From the 51st floor of the Emirates Hotel Tower in Dubai, guests can see how close they are to the desert. Directly below is a single line of skyscrapers. In their shadow is a rough spread of low-rise, sand-coloured...

Cover story: Middle Eastern investors - Reforming Egypt's capital market.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Nat Mankelow Dr Mahmoud Mohieldin, Egypt's Minister of Investment, has much to occupy his working day. There is a serious bread shortage in the country, a situation caused by high wheat prices worldwide and persisting despite a...

Strategies, allocation & performance: Syndicated loans - Syndicated loans market left reeling from liquidity shortage over two decks.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Nat Mankelow Spotted written on the left hand of an investment banker at a recent gathering for the European syndicated loans market were the following letters: PUSH. Though the precise meaning of this scrawl will remain forever...

Strategies, allocation & performance: Longevity risk - Schemes counter deficits fueled by longer lives.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Martin Steward The credit contraction has focused the attention of the powers that be on the levels of risk being run by the UK's pension schemes. The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) in particular has expressed disappointment at the...

Strategies, allocation & performance: Covered bonds - Covered bonds club seeks stability.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Christine Senior The UK has joined the club of European nations with a legal framework for its covered bonds. But the new regime is unlikely any time soon to dent the dominance of its German equivalent, the Pfandbrief, which has...

Strategies, allocation & performance: Funds of hedge funds - High-fee funds of funds called into question.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Ceri Jones One major concern around the growing use of hedge funds is that the universe is proliferating so fast that finding opportunities to generate alpha are diminishing and many managers are on a band wagon of charging...

Strategies, allocation & performance: Investment consultancy - Providing trustees with right tools for the job.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Martin Steward When the UK National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) published its progress review on the sixth anniversary of the Myners Principles last year, it found that around half of UK pension funds had formally assessed...

Strategies, allocation & performance: Alternative investments - Hardt of the matter.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Martin Steward The first were the institutionalisation and convergence trends: the way inflows would change the predominately entrepreneurial, boutique business models in the industry for big fund-of-fund groups, multi-boutique...

Strategies, allocation & performance: Sponsored article -ETF platform - Benefits of the next generation.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Ceri Jones The traditional cap-weighting of indices has a rich history, but definite shortcomings, mostly around overweighting overvalued stocks and underweighting undervalued stocks. A second generation of exchange-traded funds...

Strategies, allocation & performance: Enhanced indexation - Big-name indexing players hindered by quant models.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Ceri Jones Essentially, enhanced indexing breaks down into two categories. First are those funds where the enhancement is a slight rebalancing of the index based on technical issues rather than picking stocks, incurring perhaps...

Strategies, allocation & performance: European large-caps - Fund performance overview - Getting the balance right.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Martin Steward Uncertainty reigns when any fund experiences significant personnel changes, but when it has spent the last few years at the top of the league tables, who wouldn't worry that the experience, the skill - or just the...

Special report: Fund domiciles - Friendly competition.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Elizabeth Cripps The Channel Islands are famously secretive: almost as little known by the rest of the British Isles as they are by the rest of the world, at least until recent grisly discoveries flung Jersey into the public eye...

Sponsored report: Fund domiciles - Channel islands flying the spinnaker.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Brett Allen Not long ago, there was a feeling that growth in the internationally well- established offshore financial communities of Jersey and Guernsey was at best incremental, and that waves of incoming wealth were falling victim...

Operations, trading & technology: Dark pools - Europe enters new dark age.
April 1, 2008... Byline: Peter Guest US alternative trading system provider Nyfix is aiming to bring a slice of American trading infrastructure over to Europe, but the regulatory status of dark pools of liquidity remains a mystery to many. Claiming to...