Activist Investing

Activist investing is an investment approach whereby an investor seeks to influence the strategy of a company. Strategy may be very broadly defined to include acquisitions, divestitures, capital structure, dividend policy and board composition, inter alia.

We see two broad aspects of this strategy that may exist separately or together. First, activist investing may seek to remedy conflicts of interest in corporate governance. Secondly, it may be seen as a derivative strategy of value investing that attempts not only to identify undervalued companies, but also to engage those companies to pursue actions that will realize shareholder value.

We believe activist strategies should be considered as a part of investors’ equity portfolios.

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GIC, Temasek eye trillions of growth in climate adaptation market

GIC, Temasek eye trillions of growth in climate adaptation market

Singapore’s two largest asset owners, GIC and Temasek, see attractive opportunities in climate adaptation solutions – a relatively underfunded area compared to decarbonisation. The former has already made selective adaptation investments and said the opportunity set across public and private debt and equity could increase to $9 trillion by 2050.

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Persistently high equity risk premium unprecedented

This paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York looks at the equity risk premium information from 20 models and estimates the ERP for various time periods. Extraordinarily it finds that the (preferred) estimator places the one-year equity premium in July 2013 at 14.5 percent, the highest level in 50 years and well above the

Investor pitfalls in setting up a satellite office

As part of the broader trend to become professional organisations, pension funds and soverieng wealth funds are expanding geographically with the establishment of satellite offices. This expansion raises concerns of governance, culture, politics and talent. This paper looks at the case studies from 12 funds that have launched or considering launching satellite offices and offers

The Determinants of Pension Funds’ Allocation to Private Equity

This paper by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) investigates the main determinants of pension funds investment in private equity funds, and particularly in venture capital and leverage buyouts in the US and Canada over the 1996-2011 period. The results show some important differences between pension funds allocating to private equity and more traditional assets. The first ones are

Recasting private equity after the financial crisis

This article published by the European Corporate Governance and written by Tilburg University academics examines the post-financial crisis trends in the private equity industry, showing investors are demanding the inclusion of more investor-favorable compensation terms in limited partnership agreements. The findings suggest these new terms not only provide the investors with more favorable management fee and profit

Systemic tail risk

A research paper by executives at the Dutch Central Bank, De Nederlandsche Bank, examines tail risk, and shows that historical tail betas are able to capture the sensitivity to future systematic tail risk.   The paper can be downloaded here  Systemic tail riskmrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Is Bitcoin a real currency?

Analysis of Bitcoin’s historical trading behaviour shows it has exchange rate volatility an order of magnitude higher than the volatilities of widely used currencies, undermining its usefulness as a unit of account or a store of value. Bitcoin’s daily exchange rates exhibit virtually zero correlation with bona fide currencies, making it useless for risk management

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