Financial Times Mandate articles from December 2006

Financial Times Mandate archives from December 2006

Asset Allocation: Scheme Spotlight - Taking the roller coaster equity ride for the long haul.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Henry Smith New international accounting standards and reporting requirements are leading pension funds to shy away from the volatility inherent in large-scale equity investing, so foregoing a valuable equity risk premium. ...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - Europe - Struggling to keep up with demand.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Karin van der Sluijs Strong economic growth and increasing investor demand is continuing to drive high returns in the European property market. However, yields are being driven lower as supply of new property fails to keep up with...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - North America - Equities build while housing crumbles.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Scott Ayres After a difficult spring and early summer, equity markets in the US have recovered since June. This move has been characterised by the continued outperformance of value over growth styles across capitalisations. ...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - South America - Global investors eye Columbia.
December 1, 2006... Latin American equity markets remain rather heterogeneous. Where Brazil is driven mainly by rising raw material prices and falling local interest rates, the other large market, Mexico, is propelled chiefly by rapidly growing workers'...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - Asia Pacific - Booming from internal growth.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Stuart Parks With the consensus now moving towards the idea of a soft landing for the US economy, the prospect of falling US interest rates along with lower but still positive growth has emerged. This provides a positive global...

Asset Allocation: The Consulting Room - Four steps to sustainability.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Tim Currell There are a multitude of factors which affect the long-term success, or otherwise, of a company and not all of them appear in a balance sheet or cashflow statement. Investors have come to recognise that managers who...

Asset Allocation: Portfolio Flows - Drooping dollar back on the slide.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Neil Mellor The euro's rapid ascent beyond $1.30 was not simply the product of thin market conditions around Thanksgiving, but rather, the culmination of issues that have been growing in prominence for some time. Lying at the heart...

Sponsored Report: Exchange-traded Funds - Where will the smart money go in 2007?
December 1, 2006... What type of Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) products proved most popular with institutional investors in 2006, and why? ETFs are very popular among institutional investors, because they make access easier in classes such as emerging markets,...

Strategy Selection: Mandate Wins - Search for alpha leads to more diverse portfolios.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Christine Senior The search for high-quality alpha has been a strong theme among pension funds this year, coupled with an appetite for diversification. Pursuit of alpha has led to greater interest in a wider range of investments:...

Advertising Feature: Get a firm grip on risk composition.
December 1, 2006... Portfolios are becoming more structured and complex. Investments are made across various equity styles, various fixed-income instruments, numerous alternative investments and alpha sources. A consequence of this progress is an increasing need...

Performance Overview: Liquidity leading the way.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Paula Garrido As institutional investors further diversify their fixed income portfolios, demand for investment products with exposure to global emerging markets debt is now higher than ever before. Pension funds and other...

Stock Exchanges: Technology - Three rivals make plans for Russia and China.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Roger Aitken As the board of the London Stock Exchange (LSE) was fending off a GBP2.7bn ($5.3bn) 'final' offer from US-based Nasdaq on 20 November, the second- largest US equity exchange has enjoyed success attracting listings by...

Special Report: Algorithmic Trading - Technology to thank for the algo boom.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Paula Garrido In the recent past, buy-side investment firms across the world have been joining the trend towards the adoption of algorithmic trading solutions. The US has been leading the way for some time but both Europe and Asia...

Sponsored Report: Algorithmic Trading - oms versus ems: who really cares?
December 1, 2006... Byline: Ary Khatchikian Traders don't care. They don't care about the semantics of the Order Management System/Execution Management System (OMS/EMS) debate. They don't care about proper definitions. They don't care what the trading system...

Sponsored Report: Algorithmic Trading - Clarify your goals to pick the best.
December 1, 2006... What role are algorithms playing in the continuing trend towards exchange- traded funds (ETFs)? At Citigroup, many of our clients use algorithms to assist in the execution of ETFs. However, these transactions have focused primarily on the...

News & Analysis: People & Industry - Sotir gently flexes muscles for a bumper GSAM year.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Yuri Bender Ted Sotir, the amenable co-head of Europe at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, is no slouch when it comes to assessing profitability. The former American college footballer, who was instructed to lose weight before...

News & Analysis: Altmann lashes out at 'stick to stockmarket' approach.(consultant Ros Altmann)(Brief article)
December 1, 2006... A leading UK consultant has berated the country's pension funds for not adapting to new ways of investing to boost returns and eliminate deficits. Ros Altmann, who managed institutional portfolios for 15 years, drew attention to the use of...

News & Analysis Strategies, Products & Mandates - Pension schemes flock to infrastructure.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Kalpana Fitzpatrick A large number of pension funds in the UK and Europe are starting to look at investing in infrastructure, with many going out to tender for it or making appointments for the first time. A number of mandates...

News & Analysis Strategies, Products & Mandates: Sustainability emerges from the shadows.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Elisa Trovato The investment industry has started to acknowledge that the implications of extra-financial issues on the market and on long-term corporate performance cannot be under-estimated any longer. In the US, the...

Special Supplement: Multi-asset Trading FX Prime Brokerage - cross-product support wins brokers' backing.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Gerry O'Kane Cross-asset prime broking has become common in the industry, swept along by the ever-increasing volumes of business from the hedge fund sector. Hedge funds have been seeking multi-asset trading for some time,...

Securities Services News: Is 'Bony M' music to the market's ears?
December 1, 2006... Byline: Yuri Bender Users of custody services have outlined the challenge to the financial industry laid down by massive consolidation, including the latest merger agreement between Bank of New York (BNY) and Mellon Financial Corporation,...

Support Services: Fund Administration - Coping with swelling demand.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Hugo Greenhalgh Quite simply, Europe's fund administration industry is booming. A combination of organic growth propelled by a flood of new fund launches and the implementation of Ucits III has seen the market increase...

Special Report: Fund Administration - Success through differentiation.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Neeraj Sahai In today's low return environment, success depends upon growing the business while reducing costs. That means separating areas that thrive on internal expertise from those that thrive on external alliances. In...

Sponsored Report: Fund Administration - The newly transparent hedge funds are winning institutional acceptance.
December 1, 2006... Byline: John Lockbaum We have always known that hedge fund managers are pioneers. Ever since Alfred Jones launched the first hedge fund in 1949, his successors have stood for innovation, both in terms of portfolio management techniques...

Asset Allocation: FTM Interview - Robert Goodman - Scudder acquisition spurs DeAM's global assault.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Paula Garrido Deutsche Asset Management's (DeAM) insurance asset management business received a huge boost with the acquisition of Zurich Scudder Investments in 2002. Although DeAM - which has total assets under management in...

Comment: The Bender Agenda - French fund houses ready to cut losses.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Yuri Bender, editor in chief Only five years ago, losing a mandate led to stigma and embarrassment. But in terms of asset management, that was another era, when each country had its own investment industry and cross-border briefs...

Advertising Feature: Thematic Strategies: An Alternative Approach to global investing.
December 1, 2006... Thematic investing involves identifying certain social, economic, industrial, and demographic trends, or "themes," that may ultimately drive the positive performance of a portfolio of securities benefiting from these trends. Critics often see...

Market Barometer: Anxiety fuels Japan equity shun.
December 1, 2006... Concerns about the Japanese economy have prompted many US and European asset managers to stop buying Japanese equities. According to the latest figures from Natexis Asset Management, the proportion of fund managers in a 'buy' phase on...

Special Report: Exchange Traded Funds - Equity etfs dominate growing marketplace.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Christine Senior Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are a huge success story. Issuance is increasing, investors are pouring money into them, and the range of asset classes covered continues to expand. But the demand for different types...

Strategy Selection: Equity Derivatives - Plethora of products show increasing sophistication.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Tim Cooper The use of equity derivatives has risen dramatically in recent years. In Europe, the volume of Eurex exchange-traded equity derivatives in 2006 had reached 807bn by the end of October. This was already 60 per cent up on...

Roundtable OMS/EMS: Can oms and ems be separate but equal?(Mike Roberts, Tim Wildenberg,Paul Scott)(Discussion)
December 1, 2006... Henry Smith: What is the difference between an Order Management System and an Execution Management System? Mike Roberts: To me it's where they sit on the trading continuum and the functionality that they give to the user. The OMS really is...

Sponsored Report: Algorithmic Trading - Adapt and adopt as talk turns into action.(Interview)
December 1, 2006... FT Mandate: Is the use of algorithmic trading strategies growing as fast as ever? If so what are the factors behind this? Jerry Lees: We are at a turning point. For a while, there was a lot of noise about algometric models. But there was...

FX Prime Brokerage Supplement: Risks and Challenges - Looking for a tonic for the risk headache.
December 1, 2006... Byline: Gerry O'Kane Risk is an ongoing headache for any party in the chain of a foreign exchange deal. Equities' dealers might find the forex market something of a nightmare, only having a choice of almost exclusively over-the-counter...