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Uncategorised posts

Paul Marsh: live with low returns

The London Business School’s emeritus professor of finance Paul Marsh admits that you have to be slightly mad to embark on the kind of research detailed in the latest edition of Global Investment Returns Yearbook. This year Marsh and colleagues Elroy Dimson and Mike Staunton – Marsh describes the three of them, pictured below, as […]
Sarah RundellJune 19, 2013
Uncategorised posts

Fewer, bigger funds for UK?

Australia, the US, Canada and Denmark have all done it. Kazakhstan and even Oman are talking about it. Increasingly, public sector pension funds are merging or pooling their assets into fewer bigger schemes. It’s no surprise the debate is gathering momentum in the United Kingdom, ripe for consolidation with a Local Government Pension Fund Scheme […]
Sarah RundellJune 7, 2013
Strategy

Pushing smart beta further

The rise of smart beta has just got another boost thanks to a study commissioned by Norway’s ministry of finance for its Government Pension Fund Global. It asked index provider MSCI to look into the feasibility of running smart beta strategies for large portfolios. Very few institutions with the size of GPFG’s $400-billion equity portfolio […]
Sarah RundellMay 29, 2013
Investor Profile

Irresistible opportunity in Nigeria

The offices of Nigeria’s biggest pension fund manager sit at the end of a quiet side street on Victoria Island, Lagos’s bustling financial capital. Inside Stanbic IBTC’s aptly named Wealth House, indicative of Nigeria’s growing savings culture, a throng of customers jostle to query staff on pension matters. Four flights up, 48-year-old chief executive Demola […]
Sarah RundellMay 24, 2013
Investor Profile

The Co-op’s equally split strategy

The United Kingdom’s Co-operative Group, a chain of food, funeral and financial services outlets, markets itself on a popular loyalty scheme whereby customers earn points that are converted into a profit share, or dividend, directly linked to the group’s annual profits. It’s a founding philosophy that can trace its roots back a hundred years and […]
Sarah RundellMay 15, 2013
Asset Classes

Pension funds and social housing: a perfect match?

Pension funds and social housing: it looks like a perfect match as schemes in the United Kingdom seek long-term, index-linked cash flows and housing associations, the not-for-profit providers of this type of affordable housing for low income households, hunt the long-term finance they can’t access via banks. Broad residential housing represents just 1 per cent […]
Sarah RundellMay 10, 2013
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