Financial Times Mandate articles from July 2006

Financial Times Mandate archives from July 2006

From the Editor: When to believe the propaganda.(Editorial)
July 1, 2006... Byline: Henry Smith Given the plethora of often contradictory investment reports being churned out daily by the asset management industry, institutional investors could be forgiven for feeling confused and bewildered. Take a couple of...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates - Transparency is your friend.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Henry Smith Hedge funds which fail to explain their investment processes to investors are their own worst PR enemy, according to Bob Parker, long-standing vice- chairman of Credit Suisse Asset Management. Speaking to FT...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates - Credit Suisse shake-up helps boost product sales.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Yuri Bender Following the recent re-branding of Credit Suisse as "one bank" and the simultaneous restructure, with the asset management division now a fully- fledged unit, rather than a sub-section of investment banking, Bob Parker...

News & Analysis: Securities Services - Competition creates hedge fund mimicry.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Paula Garrido The institutionalisation of the hedge fund sector is changing the face of the asset management industry as a whole, as large firms try to compete with the flexible and innovative nature of boutiques. At the same time...

News & Analysis: Securities Services - "Perverse" trade savings hit performance.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Henry Smith & Roger Aitken As trading costs have come down, portfolio trading volumes have risen with the result that investment performance has worsened, according to Bill Miller, chairman and chief investment officer of Legg...

Asset Allocation: The Chief - Creating a new order out of chaos.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Paula Garrido The beginning of the decade marked a turning point in the asset management industry. Until then it had revolved very much around products with very little room left for tailor-made solutions targeting investors'...

Asset Allocation: Scheme Spotlight - Change of leadership gives forces fund real firepower.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Paula Garrido With its strategic position between East and West, Turkey has come a long way over the last few years and as debate regarding membership of the European Union rages, the country has already taken significant steps to...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - Europe - Rates to blow up in face of inflation.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Christian Eckhert Global reflation is becoming the dominant factor driving bond yields up. Those investors who expected disinflationary conditions (which have been positive for bonds) to persist got caught on the wrong foot....

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - North America - Commodities dulled but will shine again.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Nelson Louie After posting gains in five of the six past calendar years, while outperforming stocks by a substantial margin, commodities have recently encountered turbulence, falling about 10 per cent between mid-May and mid- June....

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - South America - Latin fundamentals on a firm footing.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Dean Newman During the 1980s and 1990s, the reputation of South America as a place to invest in was arguably at a historic low. Today, the economic fortunes of the region have turned around so much; investors now see Latin America...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - Asia Pacific - Correction offers growth prospects.
July 1, 2006... Byline: BP Singh For the first time in the recent history of the bull run in the Indian markets, we have witnessed a sharp correction, with the Mumbai Sensex falling by 30.55 per cent after touching a high of 12,671 on 11 May to a low of...

Asset Allocation: Portfolio Flows - Markets coo to Fed's dovish tones.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Neil Mellor In mysteriously failing to adequately reflect its members' expressed concerns over elevated rates of inflation, the Federal Reserve's latest policy statement has, perhaps involuntarily, tempered investors' concerns over...

Asset Allocation: The Consulting Room - The best route to mind the gap.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Ronnie Bowie How should pension schemes allocate their assets? When we are advising our clients, the section dedicated to asset allocation is actually towards the end of the process rather than the beginning. Assets are there...

Strategy Selection: Global Tactical Asset Allocation - Continent embraces tactical approach to investment game.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Gerry O'Kane Whisper the phrase absolute returns in an institutional manager's ear and he will be salivating at the thought, but left wondering at the strategy choices. When it was announced late last year that AP2, one of the four...

Advertising Feature: Senior loans are blooming in Europe.
July 1, 2006... FT Mandate: What is a senior debt investment strategy and what impact is it designed to have on a fixed income portfolio? Jeff Bakalar, senior vice president and co-head of the senior bank group, ING Investment Management: We invest in the...

Strategy Selection: Derivatives Clinic - Giving liabilities some structure.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Wojtek Nabialek In our previous articles, we explained the principle of using an efficient frontier framework to assess the contribution of capital protected structured products in the context of a portfolio. Today, we apply these...

Strategy Selection: Hybrid Investments - Viewing investment from both sides of the fence.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Paula Garrido Hybrid investment strategies aim to bring investors the best of both worlds and their popularity has been growing rapidly. According to Sunil Chadda, head of the hedge fund and derivatives practice at investment...

Special Report: Transition Management - Transition's testing times.
July 1, 2006... The cost of investment transitions has more than halved in the last five years, according to independent measurer, Inalytics. Among third-party transition managers, the average cost per transition fell from 120 basis points to less than 50 in...

Sponsored Report: Transition Management - Taking eggs from a to b without creating cracks.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Mark Dwyer and Wim de Ruijter FT Mandate: The trend among institutional investors towards hiring transition managers has grown considerably over the last few years. What are the reasons behind this growth? Mellon Transition...

Sponsored Report: Transition Management - Catering for all shapes and sizes.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Alex Johnstone The primary goals of transition management - mitigating risk and minimising cost through the deployment of sophisticated trading strategies and strong team project management skills - remains the same regardless of...

Sponsored Report: Transition Management - Adequate protection during a transition.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Lachlan French Many transition managers purport to offer 'fiduciary transition management services'. But what does this really mean? Clients and prospects might intuit the phrase to mean that the transition manager will at all...

Sponsored Report: Transition Management - What to look for in a transition manager.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Jody Windmiller An unmanaged transition can cost as much as 3 per cent of fund value. However, a recent survey has shown that a startling 45 per cent of plan sponsors choose their transition manager without any formal research or...

Strategy Selection: Liquidity Funds - Money market funds look for steady footing in Europe.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Christine Senior Interest in money market funds has surged in recent years. In Europe assets in money funds have grown from less than $1bn in 1995 to $341bn (e268.6bn) at the end of June 2006, according to iMoneynet. But this...

Market Barometer: Equities cling on to popularity.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Elizabeth Cripps Equities remain the asset class of choice for the world's multi-managers, in the wake of their recent tumble, but they are at their least popular since April 2003. The latest World Multimanagement Indicator,...

Strategy Selection: Benchmark.
July 1, 2006... Djuro Rnic writes: The FT Mandate Benchmark Online database is a unique, fully searchable database listing the latest mandate wins and losses in the asset management, custody and related third-party services in Europe, the Americas and the...

Overview Performance: Performance Overview - A healthy obsession with risk.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Paula Garrido Gordon Strachan, investment director of the Luxemburg-domiciled Equity Alpha funds managed by Axa Rosenberg, says his team doesn't have a 'star fund manager' culture. "We are more quantitative in the way we tackle the...

Technology: Seamless Processing Systems - A platform above the chaos.
July 1, 2006... Byline: John Mayr Since the second week of May, there has been a lot of volatility in the market, driven by speculation about US interest rates. For the three years before that, since mid-2003, equity markets have trended generally upward...

Technology: Algorithmic Trading - Realising your limitations.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Roger Aitken The use of algorithmic trading strategies has grown rapidly in Europe over the past year. The findings of a survey by Edhec Risk Advisory revealed that 78 percent of buy-side firms use algorithms (up from 58 per cent...

Special Report: Direct Market Access - Buy-side freedom lets them go it alone.
July 1, 2006... While Direct Market Access (DMA) has been a major electronic trading strategy among buy-side institutions in the US market, who by current estimates channel between 30 to 35 per cent of their order flow through DMA, Europe is expected to...

Support Services: Stock Exchange Consolidation - Who benefits from stock exchange consolidation?
July 1, 2006... With daily dispatches about the future shape and control of the world's premier global equity stock exchanges, as well as proposed M&A initiatives coming from all and sundry, it is a wonder that even the most seasoned observer can keep abreast...

Support Services: FX Focus - Propping up the dollar.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Neil Record The US is running an unprecedented trade deficit and has been for many years. It is not only unprecedented in absolute terms, but also in terms relative to US gross domestic product. The forecast 2006 deficit as a...

Custody Support Services: Switch will bring greater benefits.
July 1, 2006... Byline: Ceri Jones Investment operations outsourcing is evolving slowly, but it is evident that the potential benefits of new, flexible platforms are much greater than originally anticipated. While switching away from legacy systems is a...