Most white papers looking at the asset management industry are pretty unimaginative and fairly useless. So I was pleased to read two pieces this week that – while quite generic – do a reasonable job of explaining where the asset management industry is at. The first looks at the growth in direct hedge fund investing [...]

A month or so ago I published my Top 5 Institutional Investor Themes. Number 3 on the list was Continuing Innovation in Access Routes. With drawdowns still threatening contributions to operating budgets/ endowment spending policies and pensions under significant pressure to correct funding levels, institutional investors have been forced to change the structure [...]

Vanguard has jumped on the behavioral finance bandwagon with its new model of asset price bubbles. Vanguard has a deserved reputation as a high quality institutional asset manager. Unfortunately its client facing research fails in this case to live up to its brand promise. The model itself is pretty simple and clearly explained. [...]

Following on from Debt Ceiling and Fed Policy here are some interesting recent papers/ reports on Pensions.

AON Hewitt Global Pension Risk Survey 2011: AON’s survey reconfirms well understood and well documented trends among corporate DB plans (refer to my post on Business Insider here for a summary):

a movement towards [...]