In a bid to achieve long-term returns without incurring the risk of today’s choppy markets, Asia’s biggest institutional investors are increasingly opting for alternatives in their asset allocation. The majority of respondents in a survey of 120 Asian institutional investors no longer deem long-held industry norms – such as lengthy holding periods or conventional 60/40 … Read more
Institutional investors across the planet are squaring up to changed realities in the wake of the financial crisis. It is difficult though to think of any that has found its operating environment transformed as fundamentally as Ireland’s National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF). “Being turned on its head is a fairly accurate way to describe the … Read more
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
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