There are few in the investment industry who don’t expect stiffer regulation in the near term, but do regulators—or money managers for that matter—truly understand the nexus between risk management and compliance? The financial crisis has highlighted two issues. The first is that risk comes in many forms, all of which can have serious consequences, […]
Stock market turmoil always brings — often in unwelcome ways — reminders of the trade-off between risk and safety. While short-term bonds are one of the few asset classes to have withstood the ravages of volatility, they may not yield enough to fund a retirement adequately, not with deflating yields. But what does? Certainly the […]
There seem to be cycles in private company investing. Those with long memories will remember Michael Milken and junk bonds. In recent memory, there were the venture firms of the Silicon Valley that went bust at the beginning of the decade, or more recently still, buyouts whose coda was supplied by the failure of the […]
While guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit funds have been a huge hit in the Canadian marketplace, at least one company isn’t looking to gain shelf space anytime soon. “We’re not excited about gaining market share until the product is more compatible with where we’re headed,” Manulife senior executive vice-present and chief financial officer Peter Rubenovitch told […]
Big frauds often start small. Unforgivably, they often start with small omissions. Let’s take Bernard Madoff Investment Securities, whose managed accounts are now out US$50 billion. It’s not clear whether that $50 billion was lost or if it was the supposed profits on $17 billion clients’ investments. It is clear that the numbers are big; […]
Mutual fund manufacturers are always in search of sticky assets. Lately they have been hard to find, as record volatility unleashes substantial reductions. That doesn’t mean new money isn’t coming in. But fear keeps a lot of it on the sidelines. Unless you’re working on autopilot. That’s what employer-sponsored plans do: Group RRSPs, defined contribution […]
The collapse of Lehman Brothers didn’t just take down the whole investment banking model of Wall Street; it also put the squeeze on a significant number of other investments, including principal-protected notes and hedge funds. Lehman’s PPNs, while notionally powered by various stock indexes, were actually senior unsecured obligations for a company now in bankruptcy. […]
The abolition of the foreign property rule opens up a whole universe to pension funds. Depositary receipts may be the most friendly way to access foreign markets. Until recently, most pension plans were invested primarily in Canadian stocks and bonds, since federal regulations prevented institutions and retail investors from putting more than 30% of their […]
© Copyright 2006 Rogers Publishing Ltd. The following article first appeared in the November 2005 edition of BENEFITS CANADA magazine. Hedge fund investing is becoming more popular with individual and institutional investors. But there are bumps on the path toward the investment. “Manage the risk and the returns will come,” is an oftcited adage […]
© Copyright 2006 Rogers Publishing Ltd. The following article first appeared in the August 2005 edition of BENEFITS CANADA magazine. The traditional 60/40 split of stocks and bonds for pension plan sponsors may have worked before. But the tides are changing in the 21st century. For many years during the 1990s it was conventional […]