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Investors call for conflict of interest code

As an outsourced provider, fund managers make a series of promises to investors. Anything that tempts the promise to be broken is a conflict of interest, according to chief executive of Carne Group, John Donohoe, whose organisation has conducted a survey of institutional investors’ attitudes to conflicts of interest. In a survey of global allocators […]
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The Fama of modern finance

When Eugene Fama enrolled at Chicago Booth School of Business in 1960, “finance was a joke”, he says in a candid and fascinating insight into his more than 50 years as a student, academic and teacher at the university. The essay, published by Chicago Booth’s Capital Ideas, details Fama’s own history but also a short […]
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The diminishing role of agents

I’ve always been frustrated by interviewing consultants and the lack of conviction they have about their decisions. “What would your ideal model portfolio look like?” I constantly ask. “It depends on the client” is the predictable and consistent answer. That may be valid, even true, but it speaks to a wider problem. Consultants are hired […]
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Giving time to investment governance

Roger Urwin, global head of content at Towers Watson and governance specialist, says most organisations don’t spend enough time on it, but transformational change is all about giving time to investment governance. Culture and leadership, for example is so self-evidently important in people organisations and yet it is understated in asset owners, he says. “The soft […]
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Towers Watson: complexity coming straight at you

To be a long-term investor requires thematic investing because markets and economies are complex adaptive systems, according to Tim Hodgson, global head of the thinking-ahead group at Towers Watson. Hodgson told delegates at the Towers Watson Ideas Exchange in Sydney that economies and markets are complex and adaptive, their path is not random and the […]
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