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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The ABCs of Hedge Funds: Alpha, Beta and Costs

This hot-off-the-press revised version (March 30) of The ABCs of Hedge Funds, which decomposes returns into three components – systematic market exposure (beta), value-added by hedge funds (alpha), and hedge fund fees (costs) –  includes data up to the end of December 2009. Among other things it finds the universe of hedge funds produced a

Decision making in the pension fund board room

This research examines the extent to which decision-making by pension fund trustees is affected by behavioural biases, by using a vignette-method field experiment among Dutch trustees. It finds that trustees display choices that accord with the phenomenon of loss aversion and allow their choices to be affected by the forces of social comparison: the reserve

Do managers walk the talk?

Research by Mercer and the IRCC Institute looks at the investment horizon of active long-only equity managers across different geographies and styles, examining the mismatch between the time-horizon over which managers think and say they invest and how they actually invest. It gives some insight into the causes, consequences and possible solutions to short-termism. mrec4inarticleinline

Why credit matters

In this updated paper, Janus expands on the emerging themes in the fixed income market, highlighting that important factors in 2010 include rising interest rates, spread tightening and the US government’s support of the mortgage market, which all have potentially serious implications for yield-seeking investors.mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Do hedge funds’ exposures to risk factors predict their future returns?

This research examines hedge funds’ exposures to various financial and macroeconomic risk factors with the results indicating a positive and significant link between default premium beta and future hedge fund returns as well as a negative and significant link between inflation beta and future hedge fund returns. mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

Decentralised investment management: evidence from the pension fund industry

This new research from the Pensions Institute at the Cass Business School studies the effect of decentralised investment management, including the use of multiple competing managers in specialist asset classes, on the risk and performance of pension funds. mrec4inarticleinline Sponsored Content scnative1 scnative2 scnative3

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