This new paper by Rob Bauer, Martijn Cremers, and Rik Frehen uses the CEM pension fund data set to document the cost structure and performance of a large sample of US pension funds. It finds that small-cap mandates of defined-benefit funds have outperformed their benchmarks by about 3 per cent per year. Concluding that while large scale brings cost advantages, liquidity limitations seem to allow only smaller funds, and especially small-cap mandates, to outperform their benchmarks.
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.
Pension funds in many emerging economies need to diversify offshore, says the World Bank, in order to achieve higher returns with potentially lower volatility.
An analysis of 218 Dutch pension funds has shown that paying performance fees has little impact on performance. Size of fund and specialisation were deemed more important for net returns.
An OECD stocktake compares how different country's regulatory frameworks affect institutional investors’ approaches to integrating ESG factors into their decision-making.
Dutch research has found that pension funds with longer horizons do hold more illiquid assets, but the correlation wanes after about 17 years and other factors also affect illiquidity tolerance.
Calls for a long-term investment focus have lacked a sophisticated metric to back them up – until now. The McKinsey Global Institute has found tangible benefits from shunning short-termism.
MSCI ESG Research has seen growing demand from institutional investors for data on tax-related risk. In response, it has added data such as geographic revenue transparency to its ratings.
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