Analysis

State Street has seen a spike in interest, by fund managers and pensions funds in the region, in outsourcing their trading activities in recent months. The uplift appears to have been prompted by COVID-19 and the aim to reduce risk. Michele Hardeman, State Street’s Hong Kong-based head of global markets for Asia Pacific, has written…

In a letter sent to employees late in April, Aon chief, Gregory Case, says 70 per cent of the firm’s staff around the world will take a reduction of approximately 20 per cent of salary, which will be implemented in accordance with local practices. But proposed merger partner, Willis Towers Watson, is not following suit….

Historically, it’s been assumed that the economic multiplier of a fiscal stimulus is about 0.5, but recent work indicates it can be much higher than this in depressed times, such as the current conditions, according to a research note by Amundi Asset Management. In its latest research note in its ‘Thematic Views’ series, Amundi, the…

AXA Investment Managers has shown that, in the coronavirus crisis, funds and strategies which have an ESG bent outperformed those that didn’t. This is intuitive. The client note supports the notion that an observance to ESG principles adds value for investors, especially in market downturns. It’s mainly a risk thing. The AXA-IM note, authored by…

Northern Trust has announced a new service to help institutional investors and their managers analyse their portfolios for ESG factors. It’s available through the big custodian’s Investment Risk & Analytical Services (IRAS) group. According to Serge Boccassini, the senior vice president for global product, accounting and analytics, who has been at Northern for more than…

Applying professional after-tax management in the transitioning of portfolios by super funds can save at least 30bps in the portfolio’s change-over costs, according to new research by Parametric, the specialist implementation manager. Transition managers don’t always look closely at after-tax impacts. The research report, ‘The Sting in the Transition Tail’ says that both specialist transition…

The prestigious MIT Sloan School of Management, with the assistance of State Street, has produced a paper which questions long-held assumptions about the true volatility of private equity investments. It is particularly relevant right now when some big investors are under attack from conservative politicians. As reported in last week’s Investor Strategy News, Australian Liberal…

While multi-asset strategies have gained popularity in recent years, mostly due to Schroders’ success in Australia and internationally, they are not all the same. Morningstar has produced a report to help investors choose an appropriate multi-asset manager. The Morningstar report focuses on the recent market volatility, so it may not be a good long-term assessment….

by Greg Bright The cash holdings of big super funds outweigh any projected drawdowns because of the Government’s $20,000 early-release program for disadvantaged members by a big factor, according to figures compiled by Rainmaker Information. In fact, super funds have nearly $400 billion in ‘allocated’ cash and even more in ‘operational’ cash held mainly by…

In 2011, professor John Cochrane of the University of Chicago came up with the term “factor zoo”. A fan of factor investing, he felt, however, it had become “too much of a good thing”. Since about that time, the growth in new factor strategies purporting to deliver excess returns from systematic investing techniques has accelerated….

In times of crisis value managers offer some comfort. They can see the silver lining, the light at the end of the tunnel, which other managers tend not to see. At this time of crisis, value managers, surely, after several years of underperformance, are about to come into their own. In a note to clients…

For a slightly different take on the same theme, GQG Partners, another US-based global manager, says that, to a certain extent, everyone is a value investor. No-one wants to over-pay for stocks, whether they seem ‘cheap’ or ‘glamourous’. Entry price is important across all styles. Rajiv Jain, the GQG founder, chair and CIO, says in…