diversification

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BT scheme treads carefully in emerging markets

Sunil Krishnan, head of market strategy at $62-billion British Telecom Pension Scheme Management Limited (BTPS), the United Kingdom’s largest pension fund for employees of global telecoms operator BT Group, has sage advice for investors contemplating their exposure to emerging markets. Examining the pros and cons of the asset class, Krishnan counsels caution. Speaking at a

Liquidity tightens, volatility rises

How should pension funds in the United Kingdom best prepare for the government unwinding quantitive easing (QE) and tightening monetary policy? The Bank of England isn’t showing any signs of ending QE just yet, its policy begun in 2009 and designed to stimulate the economy by creating new money to buy government bonds. But QE

Pushing smart beta further

The rise of smart beta has just got another boost thanks to a study commissioned by Norway’s ministry of finance for its Government Pension Fund Global. It asked index provider MSCI to look into the feasibility of running smart beta strategies for large portfolios. Very few institutions with the size of GPFG’s $400-billion equity portfolio

Diversification key for pioneer of fiduciary management

For someone whose ideas have revolutionised the Dutch pension industry and carried significant international clout, Anton van Nunen strikes a humble tone. Widely credited with pioneering fiduciary management from its infancy, Van Nunen confesses with a chuckle that it is “quite a surprise” that the concept has grown to win over a significant proportion of

A series of shorts
don’t make a long

It is easy for long-term investors to avoid short termism, and the solution lies in avoiding momentum and conducting risk analysis using cash flows – not market pricing. “Diversification is a joke. Diversification and risk analysis relies on pricing, but pricing is distorted because it’s driven by momentum,” says Paul Woolley, chairman of the Paul

Environment Agency fund: a natural progression

It’s hardly surprising that a pension fund for employees working for an organisation charged with reducing climate change and its consequences invests according to strict green criteria. Yet the investment strategy of the United Kingdom’s £2.1-billion ($3.29 billion) Environment Agency Pension Fund (EAPF) definitely has the capacity to surprise. The EAPF posted a total return