Financial Times Mandate articles from October 2004

Financial Times Mandate archives from October 2004

From The Editor: Efforts to hold onto star managers conflicting with needs of investors.
October 1, 2004... Does anyone really have the interests of the investor at heart? The findings of a recent report from Morningstar would make one wonder. The global research company has revealed that the way European fund managers are remunerated could be...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates News - Active management key to unlocking 'linkers' gains.
October 1, 2004... Passive investors in inflation-linked bonds are losing out on opportunities to gain extra returns, according to Helen Roberts, head of government bonds at F&C Asset Management. Pointing out that 50 per cent of UK institutional investment in...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates News - Cazenove Fund Management up for grabs.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... The fate of Cazenove's fund management business appears to be hanging in the balance, following news that JPMorgan Chase is to buy half of the blue- blooded London firm's investment banking business. The proposed deal would see JPMorgan...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates News - Intech's inflows assisting Janus back into the black.
October 1, 2004... Recently troubled fund management group Janus is finally celebrating a change in its fortunes, reporting an increase in assets under management and new products launches on the horizon. Janus Capital Group said its assets under management...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates News - Covered bonds - Ireland and Spain make dent in German dominance.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Next year's gross supply of European "Jumbo" covered bonds - a securitised mortgage instrument increasingly bought by pension funds - should reach E125bn, with a third of that coming from Germany, according ABN Amro research. While the...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates News - Sweden's AP2 outsources to eight managers.(AP2)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... In a move away from in-house fund management, the second Swedish national pension fund, AP2, has hired a slew of investment firms, including its first external fixed income managers. AP2 has selected eight managers to run nine bond briefs,...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates News - Gartmore faith in hedge funds.
October 1, 2004... Gartmore plans to launch new hedge funds in early 2005, despite disappointing returns from the asset class and signs of declining investor interest. Charles Beazley, head of institutional and alternative assets at the fund house, revealed...

News & Analysis: Strategies, Products & Mandates News - Liability matching makes Europeans change tack.
October 1, 2004... One in three European institutions are poised to change their investment strategy, with active Asian, emerging market and small-cap products likely to benefit. The shift is occurring as institutions invest more closely in line with their...

News & Analysis: Industry & People - Isis adds specialist spice to F&C outfit.
October 1, 2004... F&C has hatched a plan to survive as a multi-discipline fund manager in market conditions much more favourable to specialist managers. The firm has revealed details of the small print of its merger deal with Isis Asset Management,...

News & Analysis: Industry & People - Transition management demand forces Northern Trust to create strategist post.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Northern Trust is bolstering its global transition management operation with the creation of a new post in its Chicago headquarters, to be filled by Grant Johnsey. The role, strategist for transition management worldwide, has been dreamt up to...

News & Analysis: Industry & People - Schemes fail to gauge consultants' opinions.
October 1, 2004... The findings of the Myners report, which called for a shake up of the UK pensions industry in 2001, are slowly filtering into concrete action. One of Paul Myners's key concerns was pension scheme funding levels. Today they are viewed as...

News & Analysis: Industry & People - Starmine system lets managers keep tabs on financial analysts.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Fund managers are now able to keep a closer eye on the financial analysts they use thanks a new monitoring system. Deutsche Bank and ING are the latest companies to submit their recommendations to the Starmine system, which claims to track all...

News & Analysis: Industry & People - Near-term funding levels prompt Swiss shift to alternatives.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Swiss institutions are rethinking their investment strategies and boosting their allocations to alternatives, with a view to achieving higher near-term levels of funding. The bear market has exposed a lack of short-term funding, according...

News & Analysis: Industry & People - 'Bonuses promoting short termism'.
October 1, 2004... European fund managers are blighted by a short-termist culture, which could be harming their clients' long-term returns. Fund managers are being awarded bonuses based on performance over inappropriately short stretches of time, according to...

News & Analysis: Industry & People - Unbundling may harm smaller investors.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... The current squeeze on Europe's equity research providers could harm the institutional investors who rely on them, research firm Greenwich Associates has warned. European regulators' proposed reform of the fee structures of equity brokers,...

Comment: The Bender Agenda - Call of the wild for allocation.
October 1, 2004... How important is asset allocation to investment performance? Since most chief investment officers (CIOs) have studied modern portfolio theory, which demonstrates a strong correlation, they are agreed that it is the main driver. Get your assets...

Comment: Bottomline - Jupiter finally returns to a home orbit.(banking industry)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Commerzbank's investment banking division has seldom been out of the news in recent weeks. Mehmet Dalman, former chief executive of Commerzbank Securites jumped ship to set up alternative investments operation WMG. Among others, Ali Satrap, a...

Asset Allocation: Corporate interview - Airbus - Overcoming turbulence.
October 1, 2004... Airbus, the European aircraft manufacturer, has seen sales chart a steady ascent over the last 10 years to a point where the firm has overtaken its US rival Boeing, to command 54 per cent of the global market for large civilian aircraft. ...

Asset Allocation: Market analysis - Europe - Micro trends punch above their weight.
October 1, 2004... There are subtle micro trends developing in the eurozone, which point toward greater flexibility for both producers and consumers. In discussing structural reform, analysts have largely focused on timid labour reform in Germany. However, a...

Asset Allocation: Market analysis - North America - US growth to exceed expectation.
October 1, 2004... Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the global bond trade has once again revived despite the best efforts of the major central banks. Bond yields have fallen throughout the developed markets as the 'carry trade' (borrow short, buy long) has...

Asset Allocation: Market analysis - South America - Brazil and Argentina show positive signs.
October 1, 2004... Our current central scenario for the world economy in the next 12 months (US & Western Europe growth between 2-3 per cent, inflation between 1.5-2 per cent) makes us extremely positive about growth in the Latin American markets during 2005. ...

Asset Allocation: Market analysis - Asia Pacific - The sweet spot of the recovery cycle.
October 1, 2004... China and India are forecast to develop into the world's largest and third largest economies by 2040, according to Goldman Sachs economists. Institutional investors are investing in the sector for the short term and longer term because of these...

Asset Allocation: Portfolio flows - Only way is up for Asian currencies.
October 1, 2004... Although there was plenty of rhetoric on currency market issues from the participants at the recent G7 and International Monetary Fund meetings, there was little overt evidence that any substantive progress had been made on the timing of a move...

Asset Allocation: The Panel - Colorado Pera raises fixed interest assets.(Public Employee's Retirement Association)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... The Colorado Public Employee's Retirement Association's (Pera) asset allocation by market value is approximately 43 per cent domestic equity, 15 per cent international equity, 22 per cent fixed income, 10 per cent alternative assets, 8 per cent...

Asset Allocation: The Panel - West Sussex steers clear of hedge funds.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... Mercer Consulting has revealed there will be a "significant increase in the number of schemes allocating to hedge funds in the next year" but they will not be joined by West Sussex County Council Pension Fund. It has decided against allocating...

Asset Allocation: Mandate analysis - Pioneer gets busy in the US.
October 1, 2004... Pioneer Investment Management has grabbed top spot in FT Mandate's listing of US equity managers, ranked by volume of reported new business won over the past 12 months. Propelling Pioneer to pole position was a E2bn sub-advisory management...

Strategy Selection: Open for tender - Sweden's AP1 seeks partners for private equity.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2004... The First Swedish national Pension Fund, AP1, is seeking to appoint one or more private equity partners to establish a new private equity investment portfolio. The SEK 148.1bn (e16.3bn) scheme has tendered three segregated account mandates...

Strategy Selection: Dream team - Assured and integrated.
October 1, 2004... In their Mayfair office, two of State Street Global Advisors' (SSgA) brightest stars sit back in luxuriant chairs. Their confidence is palpable. Nigel Wightman, managing director and Kanesh Lakhani, marketing director, have the self assured air...

Sstrategy & Selection: The Consulting Room - Bridge-building exercises.(pension funds)
October 1, 2004... Australian pension funds (or superannuation funds as they're called Down Under) have invested in infrastructure assets in reasonable volumes for about a decade. At the outset, such investment was niche or even experimental but the sector is now...

Performance: Overview - DWS's winning Asian formula.
October 1, 2004... While its peers struggle to make a positive impression, DWS's Invest Top 50 Asia LC fund has put in a stellar performance over the last few years. The fund has notched up returns of 3.59 per cent in the year to October 4 2004. Over the...

Strategy Selection: Sub-advisory uncovered - The institutional approach.
October 1, 2004... The past two to three years have seen an upsurge in the outsourcing of asset management mandates to third parties across Europe. Traditional distributors are focusing on their core competency of asset gathering, and outsourcing all or part of...

Special Report: Foreign Exchange - The search for fresh income streams.
October 1, 2004... Foreign exchange trading presents both a risk and an opportunity for institutional investors. Careful currency management can not only reduce costs for investors, but it can also make a significant contribution to their portfolio's bottom line....

Special Report: Foreign Exchange - Growth reaches peak, dollar still weak.
October 1, 2004... The current upswing in the global economy has been impressive, in both pace and breadth. Annual growth among the OECD economies reached almost 3 per cent in the second quarter, with the US, Japan, UK and Canada all growing strongly. Only the...

Special Report: Foreign Exchange - Keeping your options open.
October 1, 2004... This has been a horrendous year for almost all currency strategies and managers. Recently, one of our clients sent us a report in which another currency manager, we'll call him manager 1 (a fundamental manager) proceeds to explain why currency...

Support Services: Securities services - Competition for clients hitting profits in European custody.(financial services)
October 1, 2004... An intensifying battle for business in the European custody industry is exerting horrendous pressures on margins, according to Laurens Vis, managing director at Kas Bank in Amsterdam. Overcapacity, he believes, is manifesting itself in...

Support Services: Custody - Surviving the consolidation wave.
October 1, 2004... Consolidation is one of the main themes of any part of the financial services industry, and custody is no exception. But while consolidation is normally associated with the acquisition of smaller providers, specialist custodians believe they...

Support Services: Custody - Switzerland swims against the tide.
October 1, 2004... While the world's investing institutions brace themselves for the outsourcing wave, which should see them handing control of their back offices to securities services providers, one market is determined to resist the prevailing tide. The...

Support Services: Custody - Credit Agricole Investor Services: a flexible specialist.
October 1, 2004... Specialist custodians may have developed by focusing on particular product areas or markets. But to prosper in the future, some custodians say they need to expand into new markets. This is certainly the belief of Credit Agricole Investor...

Support Services: Technology - Cutting the costs of trading.
October 1, 2004... Like an eerie vision from Isaac Asimov's collection of stories I Robot, automation is invading the world of finance. The derivatives market is the latest area to be infiltrated. But in contrast to the cinematic adaptation of the sci-fi book,...

Support Services: Outsourcing - Offloading the middle and back office.(back office operations)
October 1, 2004... It might not have been the biggest of outsourcing contracts, but the Gartmore deal with HSBC could be said to reflect the trends of the times. June saw 115 people moved from Gartmore to HSBC in a full lift-out of back and middle office...

Support Services: Outsourcing - Step-by-step planning makes perfect.(financial services industry)
October 1, 2004... "None of my clients would go back and change the fact that they outsourced." An unusually bold and straightforward statement for someone working in the financial services industry. According to Mark Speller, a consultant on outsourcing with...