It’s not very salubrious but it’s secure. The four-star Jingxi Hotel in Beijing (pictured), which is owned by the People’s Liberation Army, hosted the annual plenum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee to draft the country’s next five-year plan. (more…)

One of the ironies about the way big pension funds are rethinking their asset allocation strategies is that regional specialisation appears to be becoming less popular, even for the world’s fastest-growing region. (more…)

CalPERS’s investment committee is expected to make a decision on its alternative asset classification at a November asset liability management workshop. (more…)

Remy Briand

As MSCI moves to expand its sustainability research capability to emerging markets, its global head of index and ESG research, Remy Briand, has urged investors to dramatically improve their reporting standards to make good on their ESG cause. (more…)

First he convinced some of us that cap-weighted indexing doesn’t work, now Rob Arnott, the founder of Research Affiliates, is back with more bombshells – that the equity risk premium, as we came to know it, is gone and not hurrying back; and that emerging market debt is “objectively a better credit risk” than US Treasuries, at a higher yield to boot. (more…)

Local pension plans have warmly greeted the second phase of pension reform in Ontario, Canada, through a bill which contains provisions such as restrictions on benefit improvements where amendments will compromise a plan’s funded position. (more…)