The latest
FIS Chicago 2015

Why investors should de-carbonise

Regardless of moral and scientific arguments, the “risk of policy action” on climate change is enough reason for institutional investors to consider climate risk as having real impact on their portfolios. As an example investors at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium at Chicago Booth School of Business were told that investment-grade bonds in the coal sector […]
Amanda WhiteOctober 30, 2015
Research

Fund manager contracts and financial markets’ short-termism

This paper investigates the extent to which the delegation of funds management prevents long-term information acquisition, inducing short-termism in financial markets. The authors, Catherine Casamatta and Sebastien Pouget also study the design of long-term fund managers’ compensation contracts. Under moral hazard, fund managers’ compensation optimally depends on both short-term and long-term fund performance. Short-term performance […]
Amanda WhiteOctober 23, 2015
Research

Sovereign Development Funds: designing strategic investment institutions

The hunt for alpha is leading traditional investors toward more innovative strategies and operating models. And, significantly, one potential source of inspiration for long-term investors has come from an unconventional place: the community of sovereign development funds (SDFs). In this paper academics from Stanford University provide readers with analytical frameworks that can assist in the […]
Amanda WhiteOctober 9, 2015
Uncategorised posts

Do long-term mandates produce better results?

About 11 years ago, the Towers Watson’s Thinking Ahead Group came up with the concept of investors appointing managers for 10-year mandates. The consulting arm then started talking to clients about it in 2004/05 and the early mandates have now matured. So did it work? Do longer-term mandates produce outperformance, better behaviour and more security? […]
Amanda WhiteOctober 7, 2015
Research

Capitalising on institutional co-investment platforms

Co-investment is often perceived as referring to institutional investors investing alongside their external asset managers in companies, but increasingly it refers to investment responsibilities being shared among peer investors, as long-term institutional investors are forming co-investment partnerships with the specific objective of deploying capital collaboratively into attractive investment opportunities. These collaborative partnerships seem to be an […]
Amanda WhiteSeptember 30, 2015
Uncategorised posts

GRESB infrastructure launch

A new infrastructure sustainability benchmark has been developed by a group of eight institutional investors, alongside GRESB, to enable systematic evaluation and industry benchmarking of the sustainability performance of their infrastructure assets.   Despite large and widespread allocations by Canadian and Australian pension funds to infrastructure, institutional investors globally do not have large allocations to […]
Amanda WhiteSeptember 23, 2015
<95of255>