A swathe of UK pension funds is poised to increase its exposure to infrastructure. In a small start, which enthusiasts believe will quickly grow, the Pension Infrastructure Platform (PIP) will launch as a fund in January 2013, targeting £2 billion ($3.24 billion) worth of projects with the backing of around 10 UK pension funds. The … Read more
Complexity is, well complex. And as trite as that sounds, it’s something investors, even professional investors, don’t understand well enough, according to Tim Hodgson, head of the Thinking Ahead Group at Towers Watson. The Thinking Ahead Group (TAG), as has been reported here before, gets paid to think – a gig conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com is envious of. … Read more
There is a positive correlation between the investment performance of REITs and the “greenness” of their portfolio holdings, according to a new paper by Maastricht University’s Piet Eichholtz, Nils Kok and Erkan Yonder. The paper – Portfolio greenness and the financial performance of REITs – finds that investment performance of REITs is positively related to … Read more
The power of benchmarking funds on sustainability is demonstrated by the fact 171 property companies and funds surveyed in the 2012 GRESB benchmarking report reduced GHG emissions by 6 per cent – this is a reduction of 432,000 metric tons of CO2, the equivalent of removing 85,000 cars from the road. The Global Real Estate … Read more
The industry needs to be better at thinking how responsible investing can be accessed by smaller funds or those lacking sufficient internal resources, David Russell, co-head of responsible investment at the UK’s Universities Superannuation Scheme, says. Russell, who will join a panel at the Fiduciary Investors Symposium in Santa Monica produced by Conexus Financial, publisher … Read more
While the trend for most large institutional investors is to insource asset management, the $85-billion Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) has decided to take a different path. Much-cited CEM Benchmarking research shows that funds with internal-management platforms are better performers after cost, and this is largely driven by the lower costs of internal management. Many … Read more
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