Financial Times Mandate articles from July 2007

Financial Times Mandate archives from July 2007

From the Editor: Put your money where your mouth is.(Editorial)
July 1, 2007... Byline: Henry Smith, editor During a CEO panel discussion on the merits of specialist boutique managers versus large investment firms at the recent Fund Forum conference in Monaco, a question directed at the audience drew a telling...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates - Third-party admin attacked for lack of IT investment.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Henry Smith The response by third-party fund administrators to some of the new investment products launched by asset managers has been "lamentable" according to Roger Yates, chief executive officer of Henderson Global Investors....

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates - Private equity giant hits back at critics.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Martin Steward Apax Partners, Europe's second biggest private equity group, has hit back at the industry's critics in its 2007 report on the latest global private equity environment rankings from the Economist Intelligence Unit,...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates - Product developers look to foreign shores.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Martin Steward Product developers are responding to investors' appetite for non-domestic property by looking ever further afield for opportunities. Europe remains a rich source of returns as most major cities are lagging behind...

Asset Allocation: The Consulting Room - Alternative cuisines.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Scott Donaldson Pension trustees are presented with three challenges when looking at alternative investments - finding asset classes that offer diversification from equities, determining whether their return prospects (relative to...

Comment: The Bender Agenda - Steering Natixis into uncharted territory.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Yuri Bender Pascal Voisin, recently appointed chief executive of Natixis Asset Management, is hardly an unknown quantity. The merger of the funds units of Natexis and Ixis is apparently the fourth of his working life, following his...

Asset Allocation: The Chief - Pooling talent in pursuit of alpha.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Henry Smith Christian Dargnat is a man who conveys a sense of mission. "We are obsessed by the need to be permanently ahead of our competitors," he says. Listening to him describe what he has done since taking over last September...

Asset Allocation: Interview - Merrill's chief executive officer 'bullish on the world'.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Nat Mankelow The story behind the rise of Stan O'Neal, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of Merrill Lynch, which boasted a net income of $7.5bn (5.5bn) in 2006 from revenues of GBP70bn, is considerably more humble than...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - Europe - Tepid reaction to explosive returns.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Nigel Hankin In May, European equity markets (at least as measured by the MSCI) finally surpassed levels not seen since the height of the last bull market in 2000. That the losses of the bear market had finally been recouped seems...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - North America - US equity outlook looking positive.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Robert W. Sharps A benign economic backdrop and the strong health of the US corporate sector are likely to continue to underpin positive equity market sentiment. Although moderating, we expect the US economic cycle to achieve a...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - Investors favouring greener companies.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Pedro Villani In Brazil, environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria are increasingly perceived by all stakeholders, including investors, as an important ingredient to corporate success. While companies may...

Asset Allocation: Market Analysis - Asia Pacific - Asia gears itself up for a change.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Dr. Jerome Booth Ten years after the Asian crisis, emerging markets are net creditors. This build up has been at the cost of foregone domestic investment. Reserves have been channelled into US Treasuries and other G7 bonds,...

Special Report: Index Investing - Made-to-measure Indices.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Tony Tassell If it moves in a market, there is an index for it. Over the past five years, the number and range of indices launched as tools for investors has boomed. For areas ranging from ethical investment to arcane credit...

Special Report: Index Investing - Slice and Dice to Promote Products.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Charles Batchelor For most investors, a handful of long-established indices - the S&P 500, the DAX 30, the FTSE 100 - represent the extent of the index universe. But alongside these old faithfuls, the investment banks and...

Special Report: Index Investing - Liquidity Fuels Competition.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Kristen Paech Increased liquidity in international equity markets is driving innovation and intense competition between index providers in what used to be a sleepy corner of the financial industry. MSCI Barra has revealed plans...

Special Report: Index Investing - Smart ways of tracking over the shorter term.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Henry Smith Despite the fast-growing popularity of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), traditional low-cost passive investment strategies are still the preferred option for pension schemes looking to build core-satellite portfolios. ...

Special Report: Index Investing - New access to alternatives.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Nik Pratt Tradeable indices have become the growth area of index investing. This growth has been attributed to two key developments among both investors and the providers. Firstly, there have been significant leaps forward in...

Special Report: Index Investing - Quest for alpha sees benchmark use evolve.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Joanna Chung The attitude of portfolio managers to benchmarks of market performance is constantly evolving. Many active managers still largely track certain indices with the aim of outperforming them by certain percentages,...

Special Report: Index Investing - How to classify a hedge fund index.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Martin Steward Estimates of the assets in investable hedge fund indices (HFIs) vary widely, from $5bn (3.6bn) to as much as $20bn. Since arriving on the scene in 2003, they have thrived by offering broad exposure to hedge fund net...

Special Report: Index Investing - Pinch of salt needed for outperformance claims.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Pauline Skypala The easiest way to beat a stock market benchmark is to construct an equally weighted portfolio of the stocks in the benchmark. This investment tip, offered by Joakim Darras, director equities structuring at Deutsche...

Special Report: Index Investing - Late to the indices party.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Steve Johnson The concept of index investing may be old hat in most asset classes, but in the world of hedge funds it is still work in progress. Hedge fund indices, have of course, been around for many years, but there is no...

Strategy Selection: Commodities - Diversification dividend.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Martin Steward "We did it because we could." That was the simple message from Tim Carney, pensions manager & secretary to the trustees of the GBP578m ($1.16bn) Ernst & Young Retirement Benefits Plan, as he offered a case study of...

Strategy Selection: Dynamic Fixed Income - Finding new opportunities to spice up fixed income portfolios.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Nat Mankelow With global bond markets typified by tightening spreads and a paucity of investment grade issuances, the attractiveness of diversifying into emerging market, high yield and distressed debt has never been greater for...

Strategy Selection: Transition Management - Translating complexity into a language clients understand.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Gerry O'Kane There is a general upbeat assessment by transition managers of their industry in spite of growing complexities. Among the optimists, new markets and new client bases are being pushed by an appreciation of the value of...

Market Barometer: Interest rate hikes on the horizon.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Elizabeth Cripps Interest rates are set to go up in the long term, according to leading asset managers across the globe. The latest World Management Indicator from Natexis Asset Management, based on interviews with 182 fund...

Strategy Selection: Quantitative Investment - Academics question logic of long-held investment principles.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Martin Steward Horace 'Woody' Brock, founder and president of Strategic Economic Decisions, used almost the first words of the 2007 Citi Investment Research Quantitative Conference to announce that the "nonsense taught by the CFA"...

Strategy Selection: FX Derivatives - Investors pile in from across the risk spectrum.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Ceri Jones New ways of using foreign exchange (FX) are being driven by an investor appetite for a range of higher risk strategies as well as by the development of transparent and cost-effective electronic trading platforms. In...

Strategy Selection: Equity Financing - The pricey business of proffering 130/30 funds.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Christine Senior The advent of 130/30 funds is attracting much attention. In the US they are pretty well established but in Europe many asset managers are looking into launching this relatively new kind of fund. But not all asset...

Performance Overview: Looking at the bigger picture.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Gerry O'Kane F&C's PF Far East Equity Fund has been rated as a top performer over the last three years according to data supplied by Morningstar, with a return of 153.44 per cent. Its manager, Mark Williams, agrees that its...

Technology: Dark Liquidity - Spotlight on the costs of accessing dark liquidity.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Matthew Craig Liquidity is vital to institutional investors, but it can sometimes be in short supply. A range of factors, from the complexity of capital markets, to falling order sizes and the existence of hedge funds looking to...

Support Services: Reifs - European hot property.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Robert Manderscheid The appetite for direct and indirect property investment among Europe's institutional investors shows little sign of abating, if recent figures from Jones Lang LaSalle are to be believed. Real estate investment...

Support Services: Clearing and Settlement - MiFID panic fuels clearing and settlement guidelines.
July 1, 2007... Byline: Gerry O'Kane Headless chickens and clearing and settlement executives: not terms normally juxtaposed perhaps, but over the past year anyone watching the sector would have wondered where the big bad wolf was. With two days to...