The beauty and the beast of value and momentum investing

Are all value stocks and all momentum stocks equally attractive? In our research, we found that different types of value and momentum stocks exhibit very different performance characteristics. A value approach which incorporates some momentum and risk considerations tends to outperform a generic approach, but a value approach which intentionally goes against these factors significantly … Read more

Managing culture with risk management techniques

The interaction between governance, culture and performance is increasingly a topic around asset owner board tables. But little has been written about the relationship between culture and the financial crisis, and how to change culture in financial services organisations. Andrew Lo, professor of finance at MIT, has come up with a proposal to change culture … Read more

Why integrated reporting makes sense: Robert Eccles

Robert Eccles has been trying to change the nature of corporate reporting for more than 20 years. He has been an advocate for supplementing financials with information on non-financial factors that are leading indicators of financial results – such as product development, customer satisfaction and the development of intangible assets. The premise is those companies … Read more

Opportunities in Europe

Investors and academics agree that political developments in Greece are important because they may shape how financial markets will respond to future political situations in the Eurozone. But according to Olivier Rousseau, the executive director of the FFR, the French pension reserve fund, there is more hype outside of the Eurozone on the implications of … Read more

Capturing true geographic exposures in risk reporting

New research by EDHEC-Risk Institute questions the usefulness of analysing geographic equities exposures based on the stock’s place of listing, incorporation or headquarters. Head of applied research, Felix Goltz, suggests that in a globalised marketplace, a more meaningful analysis of geographic risk exposures, and performance attribution, comes from looking at geographic segmentation data including total sales … Read more

More evidence big is better in pension funds

A pension fund that has 10 times more assets under management has on average 7.67 basis points lower annual investment costs according to a working paper from authors at De Nederlansche Bank, that explores the relationship between pension fund size and investment costs. Written by Dirk Broeders, Arco van Oord and David Rijsbergen the paper … Read more