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Asset Allocation

Who should co-invest in private equity?

Some pension funds have hit on a lucrative strategy to extract more value from their private equity portfolios. The £34-billion ($51.6-billion) Universities Superannuation Scheme, the United Kingdom’s second biggest pension fund for university and higher education staff, is expanding a private equity co-investment strategy begun in 2008. It’s a model whereby schemes portion some investment […]
Sarah RundellMarch 22, 2013
Opinion

Gloom at NAPF attests to investor adventure

One year on and the job of trustees gathered at the United Kingdom’s National Association of Pension Funds, NAPF, annual investment conference in Edinburgh hasn’t got any easier. As the search for optimism in a low-return world endures, the conference seems to be caught in a time loop. Compared to last year, deciding on the […]
Sarah RundellMarch 13, 2013
Opinion

The smoking gun at CalSTRS

For a pension fund that describes itself as “ponderous”, the $154-billion California State Teachers’ Retirement System, CalSTRS, has moved uncharacteristically swiftly in recent months. The second largest public pension fund in the United States, the plan for teachers and faculty is in the process of divesting its holdings in gun manufacturers following the massacre at […]
Sarah RundellMarch 6, 2013
Opinion

Will infrastructure ever find wings?

It’s difficult to ignore the clamour around infrastructure investment, the asset class of the moment. Lloyds TSB and the London Pensions Fund Authority recently joined founder members of the Pensions Infrastructure Platform, PIP, a government initiative to encourage pension funds to invest more in infrastructure. The Universities Superannuation Pension Scheme, USS, just increased its allocation […]
Sarah RundellFebruary 27, 2013
Investor Profile

Billion-dollar beef-up at Barclays’ OPAM

If Tony Broccardo, head of Oak Pensions Asset Management, the investment arm of the £23-billion ($35.6-billion) pension fund for employees of London-headquartered bank, Barclays, wasn’t a fund manager he would have been an architect. But Broccardo has applied similar skills of stress testing, planning and making something structurally secure to the return-seeking fund, one of […]
Sarah RundellFebruary 20, 2013
Investor Profile

How is the Tesco fund faring aged one?

According to the latest figures, an ambitious turnaround plan at the United Kingdom’s biggest supermarket chain, Tesco, has helped reverse falling profits. Last year the retailer, one of Britain’s largest private sector employers and a landmark in every town since founder Jack Cohen opened his first store in North London in 1929, also changed strategy […]
Sarah RundellFebruary 13, 2013
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