Australian pension funds will face a greater scrutiny of their corporate governance and risk management policies that will impact investment decisions in sweeping government changes released yesterday. (more…)
The International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) released principles for regulation and supervision of commodity derivatives markets last week. Effective supervision of these markets is necessary to avoid even the prospect that derivatives contribute to speculative price bubbles in commodities, which can increase the number of people driven into hunger. (more…)
The $18.2 billion Australian superannuation fund, Sunsuper, is gradually lowering its exposure to domestic equities and moving into emerging markets. The fund’s chief investment officer, David Hartley, says the move is being driven by concerns about concentration in the local share market and the potential impact that proposed reforms to Australia’s pension industry – the world’s fourth biggest – could have on equity prices. (more…)
The International Corporate Governance Network’s (ICGN) first board appointee from the Middle East, Dr Nasser Saidi, says he wants to push for a new focus on emerging markets within the investor-led organisation that represents more than $18 trillion of assets. (more…)
Investors should be looking past a “safe haven mentality” and be structuring their portfolios to deal with the possibility of a looming risk of inflation in the longer term, says Ed Britton, Towers Watson’s global head of fixed income manager research. (more…)
According to the modelling in this paper, a modest allocation to hedge funds would improve the returns to US public pension funds by about $13 billion annually. It also shows that the track record of hedge funds in recent years illustrates that hedge funds have not been “an important source of systemic risk”.