Economic evidence is starting to show the US is emerging from recession, but the really good news, according to Jim McCaughan the chief executive of Principal Global Investors, is that credit is flowing again, which means a sustained recovery. Amanda White spoke to him about the implications for institutional investors.
OMERS widens its scope to third-party offerings
The C$43 billion ($38 billion) Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS) has been granted expanded powers by the Ontario government to provide third-party investment and pension administration services, and is at various stages of discussion with a number of plans to provide investment management services.
CalPERS officially alters asset allocation, reduces discretionary ranges
The $183 billion CalPERS board has made the first formal changes to its asset allocation targets since January 2008, increasing exposures to private equity and cash, and narrowing the discretionary ranges around all asset classes set in December last year.
Climate change and capital markets: A global opportunity
Tackling the social, environmental and economic risks presented by climate change will require one of the biggest public-private partnerships ever seen.
Parsimonious asset allocation
Editor of the Financial Analysts Journal and chair of Ennis Knupp & Associates, Richard Ennis, believes contemporary asset allocation schemes are becoming unwieldy for many decision makers because of the proliferation and splintering of investment categories, and advocates an approach that relies more on empirical evidence than on assumptions or intuition.
Quantifying labor and human rights portfolio risk
This paper, by senior research fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School,
Aaron Bernstein, explores how pension funds can gather quantifiable, independently audited data on the risks posed by labor and human rights activities of global companies, that is analogous to financial information, and how investors can help facilitate the acceptance of such data.
