Vancouver is the most desirable city to live in Canada and the fourth best in the world, according to Mercer’s 2008 Quality of Life Survey.
Other Canadian cities in the top 25 include Toronto (15), Ottawa (19), Montreal (22) and Calgary (25).
Zurich retains its 2007 title as the highest ranked city, followed jointly by Vienna (2), Geneva (2), then Vancouver (4) and Auckland (5).
“Businesses face constant challenges in identifying new markets, expanding operations and acquiring and strategically deploying resources,” says Slagin Parakatil, senior researcher at Mercer. “Establishing suitable allowances linked to local costs and quality of living is essential in encouraging expatriate employees with transferable skills to accept international assignments.”
In the United States, after Honolulu (28), comes San Francisco (29), Boston (37) and then Chicago (44). Washington, D.C. ranks 44, above New York (49).
The cities with the lowest quality of living ranking are Ndjamena, Chad (211), Khartoum, Sudan (212), Brazzaville, Republic of Congo (213) and Bangui, Central African Republic (214). Baghdad, ranking 215, retains its position at the bottom of the table.
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RBC Buying Access Capital Strategies
RBC’s Voyageur Asset Management has agreed to acquire certain assets of Boston-based Access Capital Strategies for an undisclosed amount.
The bank says that Access Capital is a strong strategic fit for Voyageur and helps it build a presence in the United States, plus it increases RBC’s activities in socially responsible investment assets.
Access Capital serves public pension funds, foundations, endowments, community trusts, banks, and related financial institutions. Voyageur, based in Minneapolis, is an institutional asset management firm with US$34 billion in assets under management.
The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed by the third fiscal quarter of 2008.
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Private Equity Investors Worry About “Strategy Drift”
Three-quarters of institutional investors in private equity are worried that private equity fund managers will stray into strategies or geographies where they lack expertise, according to a survey.
Coller Capital’s latest Global Private Equity Barometer finds that North American investors see the danger as particularly acute as 84% of them perceive managers’ ‘strategy drift’ as a risk to their returns.
Investors are aware that their own growing appetite for the asset class is partly to blame. Thirty-eight percent of institutional investors are planning to increase their allocations to private equity over the next year.
They also think strong returns will also continue to attract new investors to the asset class. Four out of five expect a significant influx of new investors over the next three years.
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RBC Dexia Launches Analytics Service
RBC Dexia Investor Services has introduced Fixed Income Analytics, which provides asset managers with detailed analysis of fixed-income portfolios.
The service provides in-depth breakdown of returns using a yield-curve based attribution model; impact analysis of all relevant market factors; customized, drill-down reporting; and a full, end-to-end solution including automated data aggregation.
“Fixed Income Analytics is a specialized service that allows asset managers to accurately measure the impact of factors such as interest rate movements, changes in credit spread, yield or duration,” says Fay Coroneos, global head, risk & investment analytics with RBC Dexia. “By uncovering the sources of returns generated, this new service can help determine how closely a manager is adhering to the portfolio’s investment mandate, as well as the risk-return payoff of the portfolio.”