AP7 accelerates equity returns with leveraging

The SEK150-billion ($22-billion) AP7 fund supplies the cream on the top of the Swedish public pension system. It essentially delivers premium pensions (in addition to the much larger pay-as-you go component) with a generous dose of equities. It has been able to further sweeten its offering by leveraging the main chunk of its portfolio. AP7 … Read more

The Pension Trust: many schemes, one trust

“We are slightly unusual,” admits David Adkins, chief investment officer of The Pensions Trust (TPT), the £5.5-billion ($8.7-billion) pension fund founded after the end of World War II to provide retirement benefits for social workers. Talking from the trust’s Moorgate headquarters in London, Adkins explains how its umbrella structure has grown to provide pensions for … Read more

BT scheme treads carefully in emerging markets

Sunil Krishnan, head of market strategy at $62-billion British Telecom Pension Scheme Management Limited (BTPS), the United Kingdom’s largest pension fund for employees of global telecoms operator BT Group, has sage advice for investors contemplating their exposure to emerging markets. Examining the pros and cons of the asset class, Krishnan counsels caution. Speaking at a … Read more

Hintze: people are
hungry for alpha

Interest rate risk is the biggest threat to portfolios and the chances of inflation are very high, according to Michael Hintze, founder and chief executive of CQS, who spoke at the AIMA Australia Hedge Fund Forum on September 10. Hintze believes there is a great deal of moral hazard in today’s markets, mostly in money … Read more

Steady defense turns the wheels at Vervoer

Patrick Groenendijk, chief investment officer of €14-billion ($18-billion) Dutch fund Pensioenfonds Vervoer, seems to be well aware of the value of stability to investors, having striven to find the fund’s ideal fiduciary manager, keep faith in a defensive investment strategy and stay at an arm’s length from government investment initiatives. The Vervoer fund has been … Read more

Liquidity tightens, volatility rises

How should pension funds in the United Kingdom best prepare for the government unwinding quantitive easing (QE) and tightening monetary policy? The Bank of England isn’t showing any signs of ending QE just yet, its policy begun in 2009 and designed to stimulate the economy by creating new money to buy government bonds. But QE … Read more