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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Top1000funds.com survey: funds favour domestic property

Funds are looking to increase their allocations to property, with direct ownership of unlisted pooled-property funds the most popular way of gaining exposure, a Top1000funds.com global property survey reveals. The survey shows funds have an average exposure to property of 9.5 per cent of their overall portfolios and would most likely move funds from equities

Research questions shareholder voting

Authors Christopher Armstrong from The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania, Ian Gow of Harvard Business School and David Larcker from the Graduate School of Business Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University, look at the efficacy of shareholder voting. The study examines the effects of shareholder support for equity compensation plans on subsequent chief executive

Risk management in commodity derivatives trading

EDHEC-Risk Institute research associate Hilary Till looks at the risk management of commodity derivatives trading and the lessons that can be learned from recent high profile trading debacles. Till, a principal, at Premia Capital Management, LLC, analysed several case studies and looks at risk management at large institutions, proprietary trading firms and at hedge funds.

Ignoring small caps
could cost: MSCI

MSCI looks at why investors may have a limited small cap representation in their equity portfolios and how this may potentially impact on both risk and returns. The researchers find that investors may be making an unintentional decision to minimise their exposure to small caps that could have cost 60 basis points of annual performance

Hedging implications for
liability-driven investors

Managing surplus risk enables pension plans and endowments to align their asset allocations with their future obligations. Market Insight:Analyzing Hedges for Liability-Driven Investors seeks to better understand the drivers of surplus risk and to analyse the potentially subtle impact of specific hedges. In Goldberg and Kim’s case study, a term-structure hedge using an interest-rate swap

Latest research

A study comparing the performance of equal-, value-, and price-weighted portfolios of stocks in the major US equity indices over the last four decades has won a prestigious award. Raman Uppal, Member of EDHEC-Risk Institute and Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School, along with co-authors Grigory Vilkov and Yuliya Plyakha, both of Goethe University

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