This report from the OECD steering committee on corporate governance attributes a great deal of the financial crisis to failures and weaknesses in corporate governance arrangements.
Equity bias thwarts Irish sovereign fund’s returns
Ireland’s €15.5 billion (US$20.6 billion) sovereign wealth fund, the National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF), has been highly exposed to the equity market malaise. Kristen Paech examines the fund’s investment strategy and the Government’s recent decision to use the NPRF to finance the recapitalisation of two of Ireland’s
beleaguered banks.
The marginal investor: thoughts from the edge
What’s in a Name (or an Acronym)?
GFC is in the lexicon. It’s not in mine. I refuse to add to the surplus of investment TLAs in circulation. I refuse because naming induces a dangerously comforting sense that we’ve understood or even controlled that named. Hurricanes sound less malevolent, friendly almost, when called Kylie
or Jason. Once named our aches, pains and pathologies are noticeably softened and more readily accepted. We infer that someone, somewhere has identified, studied, and perhaps cured the pathology, an inference consistent with investment folklore that the greatest opportunities occur before an asset class
or strategy has been named. How re-assuringly benign and trustworthy are strategies pre-fixed by ‘enhanced’, ‘structured’, ‘protected’, and ‘balanced’? In Germany die Stratacticalstructuredquantamentalenhancedich
would surely induce a calming comfort and inspire trust.
The stochastic advantage: volatility creates opportunity
Robert Garvy, chief executive officer of Florida-based INTECH Investment Management, talks to Kristen Paech about the benefits of mathematical investing, and the blurring of the line between passive and active investing.
Does your portfolio have bad breadth? Choosing essential betas
In this article, Ed Peters, co-director of global macro at First Quadrant, Ed Peters, examines what markets, or betas, are essential to fully diversitfy a global portfolio, while still achieving long-term goals; and how breadth is often confused with diversification.
Control shift in GP/LP dynamic: Cambridge Associates
In the headiness of the bull market, institutional investors generally took on more risk and enjoyed fewer rewards than alternatives managers. But the crisis has provided an opportunity for both counterparties to redefine the balance in the LP/GP relationship, in which institutions are entitled to demand a true alignment of interests on returns, lock-ups and fees. Simon Mumme examines new research by US consultancy Cambridge Associates.
